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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28995771">Trust Fall</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viraaja/pseuds/Viraaja'>Viraaja</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Sex, Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Clothed Sex, Comeplay, Drunken Confessions, First Time, Forced Proximity, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort Turns Sexual, M/M, Neck Kissing, Praise Kink, Smut, Submissive Armitage Hux, Touch-Starved Armitage Hux, Trust Issues, Trust Kink, Virgin Armitage Hux</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:13:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>27,673</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28995771</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viraaja/pseuds/Viraaja</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I like you, Hugs.”</p><p>Hux snorts, derisive, disbelieving.</p><p>Hopeful.</p><p>“Surely you can do better than that,” he prods like it’s an open wound, eyes desperately wanting to meet Poe’s but terrified of what he might see.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>116</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Hoelidays Gift Exchange 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Trust Fall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adunno/gifts">Adunno</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“We <em>really</em> have to stop meeting like this.”</p><p>Eventually, when his teeth have been ground to stumps and his heart has developed an incurable arrhythmia, Hux will tell Poe to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. The saying means very little for a person like himself who grew up on a starship, and the shiniest thing he can remember was probably the polished gleam of his father’s boot right before it kicked him in the face; but he supposes it will mean more to Poe, whose skin has spent a lifetime warmed by a planet’s sun, and whose very smile shines obnoxiously bright every time he levels it on Hux.</p><p>“For a man who has a reputation as a hero, you require an astonishing amount of saving, Dameron,” Hux instead spits, as he side steps the bodies of the three unconscious men who somehow still look more together than Poe. Their intel had been good, but the meeting had gone bad, and for some reason Hux has again been assigned as Poe’s backup (he makes a note to approach Rey, later, and find out who is in charge of these assignments).</p><p>“Good thing you’re always around to bail me out.” Poe pushes himself up from the ground, brushing at the invisible dirt on his knees because his pants have been stained that color for days and Hux doesn’t want to think about why he’s noticed <em>that</em>.</p><p>“It’s almost like you’re doing it on purpose.”</p><p>But then Poe looks at him with a sheepish smile, like Hux isn’t wrong, and of all the things he's noticed about Poe, this is the first time he feels truly blindsided.</p><p>The blaster is still warm in his hands, the power cell still charged. Hux thinks about putting a bolt in Poe’s stupid fucking face and leaving him stunned alongside the men who would have killed him. Instead he turns away. Something about looking at Poe right then while also imagining his body lying prone amongst his enemies has Hux’s stomach in knots, and now is not the time to think about all the strange things Poe has a knack for making him feel.</p><p>“This really what we came for?” Poe asks as he slides the datastick into the pocket of Hux’s parka. Hux tries and fails not to flinch at the sensation of a hand brushing his hip. “All that trouble for one little scrap of tech.”</p><p>“It’s not just a little scrap of <em>tech</em>,” Hux snaps, shaken, even as his fingers grope frantically for the shape of the datastick. He grips it like an anchor, nails biting sharp into his palm, and swallows gratefully when his body stills, just a little. But it is true, the datastick is far more than just <em>a little scrap of tech. </em>“The Empire spent decades compiling these datasets. They are the key to the Order’s success, who knows where they would have ended up after these men sold them into the black market.”</p><p>“I know, I know,” Poe is smiling at him again, pushing his hair out of his face in that infuriating way that makes Hux want to chase after his hands - no, his <em>heels</em> - screaming <em>why me</em>? Why does Poe smile at him? Why does he never put up a fight when Hux is assigned to his missions? Why did he not leave him on the <em>Steadfast</em>, but instead drag him kicking and screaming to the Resistance?</p><p>And why does he <em>trust</em> <em>him</em> with the most precious bit of intel they’ve recovered yet? Like Hux isn’t the most ably equipped man in the Resistance, let alone possibly the whole <em>galaxy</em>, to put this information to good, or - let’s be honest - nefarious use?</p><p>The jump back to the base is spent in silence. If someone were to have asked Poe, Hux knows he would have described it as companionable. But that’s only because Hux has sequestered himself in the fresher, hands shaking as he stares down at the datastick and the pad he slipped from Tico’s workshop weeks ago, trying to will himself to make the damnable copy and be done with it.</p><p>He scrapes at his palms instead. It’s a leftover habit from his childhood. An odious thing his father’s boots had first inspired, that had followed him into manhood along with too many other obsessive compulsions to name. He doesn’t get deep enough to bleed, he just needs the pain, that little bit of grounding in his body to remind him of where he is, and what he has failed to accomplish. But this time, the pain does not purge the scathing thoughts from his head. Instead, it reminds him of how he’s nothing but a worthless slip of a man and just as useless.</p><p>“Everything okay, Hugs?” Somewhat like vomit, Poe spews concern when Hux returns to the co-pilot’s seat. Hux only briefly meets his eyes as he lowers himself down atop where his parka has been draped across the cushion. Poe had done that. Probably because Hux has finally complained enough times about the broken seam and the exposed stuffing that makes sitting in the chair as uncomfortable as the proverbial stick everyone tells him he has stuffed up his ass.</p><p>“I’m fine,” he snaps, because Poe won’t stop looking at him. It makes Hux want to ask Poe why he feels he’s something worth looking at in the first place. Because he isn’t, Hux desperately wants him to know. No one should look at him the way Poe looks at him, because Hux is a failure, and he is a coward.</p><p>But worst of all, he is a traitor.</p><p>The cigg is presented as if Poe is able to read his thoughts.</p><p>It’s some brand he doesn’t recognize. Mild and herbal, almost sweet tasting, when he lights it up and takes a slow drag. The cigg calms his nerves, settles his stomach, and it quiets the chatter in his head as well as it eases him down into his chair, so he sits there with Poe watching the flux of hyperspeed in a reckless gamble of mania - one he knows well now from all their jumps together.</p><p>If not for the cigg, Hux might have taken the time to point out that Poe may have a problem. No one should watch hyperspeed for as long or as often as Poe does. But as the smoke leaves his lungs so do his worries leave his head, and as he rubs at his tender palm, Hux decides he’s hardly the person to be pointing out anyone else’s <em>problems</em>.</p><p>The rest of the jump is spent in silence. This time, if someone were to ask Hux, he probably would not have described it as companionable, but he might have called it comfortable.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Both the datastick and the pad clatter dull on the plastitop when Hux drops them on Rey’s desk.</p><p>The desk doesn’t suit her. To be fair, command hardly suits her. She is a wild thing not meant for the shackles of this kind of world: a world of men and tech and bureaucracy and lies. Hux’s world, if he were able to reclaim it. But she adapts as well as any wild creature would, and fills the role of General with a propensity towards kindness that is sure to get them all into the same kind of trouble that had driven Hux to spying in the first place. The only reason it has not yet, he likes to think, is because of his unlikely yet welcomed involvement.</p><p>“What’s that?” She asks as she reaches for the datapad. She uses her hand, rather than the Force.</p><p>“I stole it.”</p><p>“From the dealers?”</p><p>“From Tico’s workshop.”</p><p>Rey blinks up at him, eyebrows raised in contemptuous question, as if Hux doesn’t well know what sort of punishment this will earn him. He thinks, with idle relief, they can’t send him on missions with Poe if he’s locked up in the brig.</p><p>“Do you…want it back?”</p><p>The gape to his mouth must have lasted too long, because Rey quickly pockets the datapad with a pinkish sort of tint to her face and a twinkle to her eyes that looks far too much like Poe when he has something awful planned. She’s laughing at him. She’s <em>laughing at him</em>.</p><p>Hux knows that if Rey’s face is pink, his is red. He leaves her tent with a huff, somehow making dust out of the soggy jungle loam that softens his boot steps all the way back to the barracks and the little lean-to he calls home. He spends the rest of the afternoon avoiding everyone, which is both easier and harder said than done, because there is no where on Ajan Kloss that affords any real privacy, but most everyone gratefully still avoids him.</p><p>It’s only later, when Hux has tucked himself into his usual corner at the back of the makeshift hangar, running diagnostics on Poe’s ship’s BIOS, that Rey finds him. She’s not laughing this time. Her face is very calm, almost serious, and the words she speaks are clearly kind. It makes Hux feel like she’s not talking to him, but one of her comrades.</p><p>“I want you to have this,” said as she holds out a datapad - <em>his</em> datapad. The one he had on his person the day his spying had come to an end and his involvement with the Resistance had begun in earnest.</p><p>Unlike the near broken scrap of Republic trash that had been the datapad he’d stolen, his datapad is beautiful, top of the line modern tech - the likes of which he has not seen anywhere on this hobbled together base.</p><p>“Why?” he asks, as he accepts the pad, this time, without hesitation.</p><p>“Because we trust you,” she says simply, without complication.</p><p>Without an ounce of executive thought, Hux can’t help but think.</p><p>But, apparently, he has also lost all executive function, because he blurts out, “Is that why you keep sending me on Dameron’s missions?”</p><p>This time, the smile Rey leverages onto him twinkles in her eyes with a buried laughter that seems as much like it’s aimed at him as it’s directed towards some other thing Hux is not privy to, but has an inkling of, when she replies, “Oh no, that’s all on him.”</p><p>Just as quickly as she arrived, Rey is gone. She retreats across the hangar like a sprite through water, disappearing before Hux can ask why the fuck Poe is requesting him for his missions.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>That evening finds him amongst the rest of the base camp, taking his late meal around a bonfire that’s been burning for so long that it is more embers than fire. Ajan Kloss is hot enough without the help of a fire, but Hux thinks he’s catching onto the appeal, even if he doesn’t quite experience it himself. A burning bonfire is like a beacon to these people. They flock to the smoldering remains like moths, fluttering around each other until, eventually, they pair off (sometimes more, Hux observes) and disappear laughing into the night.</p><p>Hux likes to watch them - the Resistance. They’re fascinating in the same sort of way watching a battle unfold is fascinating. He’d thought them karking mad, at first - now he just understands they’re different. In the Order, casual encounters the likes of which take place here would be fraught with power imbalances, ulterior motives, and deceit. Here, these people are simply seeking companionship. It’s a strange concept to him, someone who has never been one for friends, or relationships, let alone shared a bed with a partner, or even had a partner.</p><p>So when Poe seats himself on the rock beside Hux, he’s not so much wary of his presences as he is completely unnerved.</p><p>Poe is handsome even without the warm glow of the dying fire. With it, he is downright captivating.</p><p>“Have you been drinking?”</p><p>The question comes as Hux lifts a shaking cup of blue liquid to his lips. Someone had poured it for him, a woman he had recognized, but only in face. He still isn’t great with names, he never had to be until now, but he’s working on it.</p><p>“I’m allowed,” he belatedly snaps.</p><p>“That’s not what I meant, I’ve just never seen you drink before,” Poe scoots a little closer. Where he’s perched, he’s at eye level with Hux. He’s not used to that. He’s used to being taller than everyone - well, except Ren. He’d never been taller than Ren. Or his father. Or even Snoke, propped up as he always was by that immense throne. But where those men had felt threatening, Poe feels…comfortable. His closeness, his proximity, and the ease with which he moves into Hux’s personal space as if he’s supposed to be there. And when Poe reaches out to brush his fingertips over Hux’s knee, his touch is light, comfortable. So even though Hux doesn’t trust himself to speak he does anyway.</p><p>“My father drank,” slips untethered from his mouth and Hux immediately wants to pull it back. It’s Poe, however, who pulls back.</p><p>Hux desperately wishes he hadn’t. More desperately searches for an excuse to as to why he feels that way. But he doesn’t need an excuse. He already knows the truth as well as he knows Poe does not share his feelings. That Poe is here out of some unfounded sense of kindness, or heroism, or pity, leaves Hux raw in a way that hurts unlike anything else he has experienced until he met Poe Dameron.</p><p>“That bad, huh?” Poe smiles instead of touching him again. He has a cup in his hand too. It could be water as much as it could be something else. Hux has only seen Poe drink on missions. “What’s the occasion tonight?”</p><p><em>Because I’m weak</em>, he doesn’t say, even though it’s a pretty good explanation for so much in his life. Instead, he stares down into his cup, lips pursed over the sour sweet burn that lingers on his tongue. <em>Liquid courage</em>, he’d heard uttered enough times to know how the Resistance approached alcohol. Perhaps that was why his father drank. Maybe it made beating his own son easier to swallow.</p><p>But it's possible Hux does feel a little brave, even if he hardly trusts himself to say the right things to Poe. Words that might lead whatever fragile thing exists between them to the same places the rest of Resistance goes on these warm, humid nights.</p><p>Hux takes another sip. Lets his eyes meet Poe’s, and tries, “I was curious. It does not taste like the color.”</p><p>“Oh, and what is blue supposed to taste like?”</p><p>“Cold. Like ice, or death.”</p><p>“Blue should taste like the sky. Like clouds and air.”</p><p>Hux lets his eyes be held by Poe’s, sees how openly he stares. Suddenly, he doesn’t feel brave anymore. He feels un-moored, like Poe’s stare is disturbing whatever sense of foundation he has built for himself here on base. Because looking at Poe is like looking at a sun: beautiful and bright and dangerous, and if he stares too long he will surely go blind.</p><p>Very quickly, he looks away. And he can’t help but think that makes it easier, when he says, “Well it actually tastes like bantha shit, if you really care to know.”</p><p>Poe laughs. This time it is not at Hux, but with him.</p><p>And maybe Hux is braver than he thought, because once Poe’s laughs have tapered off he blurts out, “Why do you keep requesting me for your missions?”</p><p>To his credit, Poe only looks <em>slightly</em> taken aback.</p><p>“I like you, Hugs.”</p><p>Hux snorts, derisive, disbelieving.</p><p>Hopeful.</p><p>“Surely you can do better than that,” he prods like it’s an open wound, eyes desperately wanting to meet Poe’s but terrified of what he might see.</p><p>“You’re great with a blaster, and you think on your feet.”</p><p>Ah, right. Of course. So that’s all this is.</p><p>He should be relieved, but he only feels pain.</p><p>And then shock, when Poe follows up with, “also, I enjoy your company.”</p><p>It lands like a blaster bolt to his chest. Hux would have staggered if he were standing, because it is, quite possibly, the nicest thing anyone has ever said to him.</p><p>But then Poe has to go and follow it up with, “and I trust you.”</p><p>The alcohol hits the grass with a muffled patter, as Hux pours out his drink.</p><p>“There’s no need to lie, Dameron,” snapped as he stands. By the time Poe’s eyes finally meet his again, dark with an unspoken question, Hux is turning to leave. But walking away doesn't feel brave. It feels cowardly, and a small voice inside Hux tells him he's made a terrible mistake.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Two days later, their next mission takes them to a world that is as wet as the last planet was cold. It’s some moon in the unknown regions, not a place Hux has heard of before - or maybe he has. The name is as unassuming as the landscape is forgettable, and Hux finds his mind clouding the details the longer they remain surface-side. They’ve been there just over a cycle, long enough that the wet makes him shiver with cold despite how warm his body is beneath his parka - like he can never get dry now that the moon’s fingers have finally wedged their way under his skin, seeking his bones.</p><p>Hux allows Poe to lead him through the mission on a sort of loose tether. Normally it is Hux insuring they abide the mission tenets, meet their contacts on time, and lay low when Poe would rather be flying high. But maybe that’s nothing but the part Poe sometimes likes to play, because this serious, hyper-focused version embodies a capability that explains so much more about how the Resistance thwarted the Order than that reckless hero scraping by on sheer luck ever did.</p><p>But Hux, as usual, keeps his thoughts to himself.</p><p>He’s tailing Poe, as is their usual dynamic. Despite how much of a disguise his Resistance garb feels, Hux is still too obviously Order, Poe insists. His accent too Imperial, his step too sharp, his mannerisms too refined, for him to ever play the part of intergalactic ruffian. Poe, however, is none of those things. His accent is fluid, Core worlds one moment and then drawling slang so thick Hux wonders if it’s not another language. And he moves through the bar with the grace of a starfighter through an asteroid belt, charming his way into conversation with the same gentle ease Hux knows he becomes victim to each and every time he sits in that co-pilot’s chair.</p><p>They’re after some mid-level smuggler ring called the Runners. Here on this backwater moon they still call the Order the Empire, as if the disease that wiped out most of the children and younger adults also wiped out the older generation’s ability to stay abreast of the times. But old Imperial intel is what they’re after, because an old Imperial is who Sheev Palpatine had been. And If they’re ever going to flush out his network of support it’s going to be by starting at its source.</p><p>While it takes some time to find the Runners, the exchange does not go south, this time. Hux wonders if it really was a disease or simply the mundane monotony of the planet that killed all its young people, because boredom drags heavily against his mind when the smugglers slip out of the cantina with barely more than a wet sniff. Poe, as planned, has hung back. He’s sprawled across a booth bench in an easy swagger, blaster hanging boldly from his hip, sipping at a short ball glass filled with some innocuous golden liquid.</p><p>Hux waits for the signal, even though he already knows these are the right men. It comes in the form of Poe’s hand sliding into his pocket to jostle a credit to the floor. As the metal pings sharp amongst the dim susseration of voices, Hux pockets his datapad and slides from his stool.</p><p>It’s been a little less than thirty seconds since the smugglers left, and he skirts the exterior wall of the cantina until he has a decent vantage of where they’ve hunkered into an alcove off the alley to get out from the rain. The tracker slides rigid under his fingers where it’s nestled deep in his parka beside his pad. He’ll slip it into their vehicle when it arrives, or the pocket of their coat when he bumps their shoulder on his way past. His chance will come, because it always does.</p><p>In the darkness of the alley, shadows bleed inky into the night, and he falls back into the deep cast of one as he observes the long narrow passage. It appears empty, but any ambush worth its salt always does.</p><p>The cigg falls out of his sleeve and into his fingers. A practiced maneuver from his younger years left over from a habit he has never managed to completely kick. But here, on some no-name moon lurking in an alley, it’s all just part of his cover. The drag of smoke is dense, heavy, not at all the delicate sweet taste of Poe’s ciggs, but it settles into his lungs and floods his bloodstream and Hux feels both the aches of his body as well as those of his mind leak out with his exhale.</p><p>Okay, so maybe it is a bad habit, but it’s hardly the worst decision Hux has ever made for himself.</p><p>The calm is nice, not artificial like the sleep aides he used to take - natural, or as close to natural as he can probably ever hope for. His eyes slip shut for the briefest moment of indulgence and time slides over his body in dragging waves, the cigg burning down slowly from its place between his lips. One minute, and the alley remains quiet. Two, and even the main drag grows distant. At three and a half, Hux lights a second cigg, the flickering flame sprawling a welcomed warmth across his face that for some reason reminds him of Poe in front of that bonfire.</p><p>The smuggler’s ride arrives at precisely four minutes, a small transport with one large windshield wiper which squeals with every last faction of a swipe down. Hux leans away from the alley wall, pulling on an inhale of cigg smoke as he plots his move.</p><p>Years of living aboard a star destroyer awaiting Ren or some other internal threat to slip from the shadows prepares him, mostly, for the attack.</p><p>It comes from the main drag, rather than the alley. A single bolt of a blaster that strikes the duracrete brick beside Hux’s head in a shatter of fletching. The smuggler’s shouting drowns out his curse, but the smoke spills from his lungs as he breathes out another. He can only watch as the smugglers pile into their transport and tear off down the street. Can only dodge again when another bolt shoots blindingly from a second story window across the drag. His blaster is already in hand, primed and set to stun, because they’re supposed to leave no trace.</p><p>Twenty-two people - that's the amount of men he’s taken out without killing since joining the Resistance. He doesn’t know why he's bothered counting.</p><p>As the third shot comes, he falls back into the alley, further into the shadows, despite the fact that it is likely a dead end. A fourth shot never comes, and it’s only then that he realizes this was, in fact, the trap all along - and he’d just walked right into it.</p><p>A man emerges from the darkness. Tall, wide-framed, bigger than Ren but not as fast, so Hux is able to dodge the rifle bolt with a quickness born as much from instinct as experience. In the last six months he’s been in more close combat than he can remember during the whole of his last six years of command, and his training rears to renewed life as he ducks low and darts in fast. The boot he brings to the back of the bigger mans knee drops him to the ground, and the bolt he puts between his shoulder blades keep him there.</p><p>The stun is close enough to cause actual damage but Hux isn’t thinking of that. Instead he’s considering the two men who have entered the alley ahead, backs to the brighter lights of the main drag, blasters leveled on him, who - despite the shadows - is facing the refracted glow of the city street.</p><p>Cigg still hanging from his lips, Hux takes another inhale, considers his options. He should be fishing the comm from his pocket, sending the appropriate signal to Poe, who is literally just a wall away following protocol by counting down the minutes to eight, in which he’ll come to his own conclusions regarding Hux’s fate. But the bold red glow of their blasters will not allow Hux the time he needs to make the call, and the quickly depleting meters of alley are a countdown that won’t last thirty seconds, let alone the three minutes it will take before Poe realizes something has gone wrong.</p><p>He dodges the first shot easily. A roll towards his pursuers puts him at waist height, and he shoves the butt of his blaster up under the shooters chin. His head snaps back with a clatter of teeth, and then Hux is moving again, sliding to the right while the injured man staggers back, so their body remains between him and the other gunner. Hux takes another drag of his cigg as he levels his blaster, ready for the moment the man finally drops to the ground. Then he takes his shot.</p><p>The stun hits, but the man doesn’t go down. Body armor. Hux can see it now - hear the hum of it layered beneath his leather jacket. Expensive stuff, the kind with shielding, which explains why even the brunt of the bolt hadn’t so much as made him stagger.</p><p>Hux bares his teeth as he meets the gunner’s eyes.</p><p>Tosses aside his blaster in favor of the knife that, like the cigg, drops from his sleeve into his fingers.</p><p>“Imp scum,” the gunner snarls as Hux lunges.</p><p>He’s heard a saying before, something like, ‘never bring a knife to a gun fight’, but knives have served Hux well, as evidenced by the way the the blade slips easily between the folds of the shielding to spark electric across the expanse of the gunner’s chest. He shrieks, briefly, before his body collapses smoking to the alley ground. He might be dead, Hux realizes, with an odd sort of twist of regret. He’ll have to start over counting.</p><p>He mentally notes the time. A minute and a half left before Poe comes looking for him. Just enough time to finish his fucking cigg.</p><p>A cuff to the side of his head has Hux stumbling. A fist to his gut has him retching. But it’s the stun bolt to his chest as he looks into the eyes of the big, wide and decidedly not unconscious man that knocks him into darkness, and only then does the cigg finally fall from his lips.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>He wakes, eventually, to the distant sound of dripping water. Darkness cocoons him, humid and sticky with the sour taste of his own breath. Beyond it, he can smell the earthy musk of plant life, mossy and wet despite the duracrete he is laid out upon. The hood is damp from where he’s been lying in a shallow puddle and it sticks to the side of his face when he pushes his way up to his knees. Besides the water, Hux hears nothing. Not the distant cast of voices, or even the thunk of a bootstep. It’s just him and his shallow breath and hammering heart, and that lazy drip drop of falling water.</p><p>Thoughtfully, Hux acknowledges he’s never actually been kidnapped before.</p><p>Beneath him, the floor scrapes grit into his pants. It’s old duracrete, time wearing it’s surface enough to erode it into a layer of sharp little knives that dig into his skin despite his clothing. He’s not naked, but his parka has been removed, along with his boots, socks, gloves, belt, and blaster holster. His ankles are tied together and his hands are secured behind his back, zip-tied so tightly that Hux thinks himself lucky that he can still feel his fingers.</p><p>But, there’s not much of his body he <em>can’t</em> feel. Everything aches. From his head all the way down to his bare toes. They must have beaten him while he was unconscious. Not too unusual for a kidnapping, he figures. But nothing is broken, and he is still alive. Either they think he’s worth a bounty or they have something far more malevolent planned. Fate, it seems, has caught up to Hux. It’s not the first time. He hopes it is not the last.</p><p>Whatever plan he’ll contrive to escape requires more information. So that is what Hux sets himself to do when he scoots his way backwards until his back meets a wall. It’s damp, but not wet, concave enough that he determines he must be underground, perhaps a defunct sewer system, or a colony of mines. Certainly, he must still be moon-side. His stomach growls empty but not famished, so he has only been unconscious several hours at most. Not long enough to jump anywhere remotely close to habitable, not when that damned moon was the most civilized settlement in the system.</p><p>He shoves himself up the wall in slow, shuddering, jolts. By all rights he should have fallen. Vertigo slams into him the moment he is upright. But the wall catches him like his lungs catch his breath, and then Hux is forcing himself into action, if only to keep his nerves at bay. Balancing becomes even more precarious as his bare bound feet slide over the broken duracrete, but he manages to haul himself around the perimeter of the room without falling. A victory made smaller when he realizes he hasn’t even discovered a door, by the time he has mapped the room twice over.</p><p>It’s a small rectangular space made up of two concave walls, bisected by a framed-out gate at one end and a flat expanse of durasteel at the other. The room could be a prison or it could be his sarcophagus. He’s not getting out of here as he is, the logical part of his brain remarks. And it’s the reptilian part that gnaws panic through his suddenly stripped down layers. All at once, standing becomes impossible, and his back hits the durasteel with a dull clang. Slowly, he slides down. Slower yet, he registers the sharp divots that catch at his shirt. They litter the surface like a spray of fletching, and Hux doesn’t want to think of what that means. Doesn’t want to linger on what would have created that texture across the durasteel, or why the floor here slopes gently downward towards that distant echoing drip.</p><p>Maybe it’s the shit material of the hood, or maybe his head had been hit harder than he remembers, but his lungs can’t pull air and the back of his skull throbs where he tips it against the wall. He can’t remain upright, but he’s afraid to lay down again, so he shimmies his way to the corner where he can wedge himself into the crevice - an unlikely cradle Hux likens to what maybe arms would be like. Not that he would know. Hux can’t remember ever being hugged. But he can imagine what it might feel like.</p><p>The walls leech his body heat but Hux doesn’t care. The cold numbs the pain and dulls his mind, and he pushes his panic under the pall of fatigue.</p><p>For the first time Hux wonders if anyone is actually coming for him - whether the kidnappers or a bounty hunter, or perhaps even Poe, as unlikely as that may be. Certainly as unlikely as the chance of it being his arms which cradle him to sleep.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>He’s woken by a jostle to his head when someone grabs his hood. His hair is caught in their grip, so when they drag him from his place in the corner it’s all Hux can do to follow lest his hair be torn from his scalp. His ears are ringing and he suspects he might have been cuffed in the head again, but before he can think past the pain and the instinct to reduce it, someone is hauling him to his feet by his neck.</p><p>“He’s a tall fucker, isn’t he?”</p><p>The voice is different from the one in the alley. Hux doesn’t know yet if he’s already been sold off or if these are still his original kidnappers. But whoever they are seem intent on moving him a decent distance, if the snipping release of the zip tie to his ankles is any indication. But before Hux can so much as take a step, there is a cool pinch of a hypo injection against his neck.</p><p>A wave of vertigo, a rush of sound, and he collapses to his knees. Someone takes the opportunity to punch him in the face, and Hux bites his tongue instead of making a sound. Whatever drug they’ve given him has only affected his body, as his mind still turns over relatively unscathed. He picks out three separate sets of breathing, three sets of bipedal footsteps. Three unique voices, even if they all share the same outer rim twang.</p><p>“Boss wants him recognizable, no hits to his face.”</p><p>“The fuck this is General Hux, I don’t care what he thinks.”</p><p>“Well I don’t want to be the guy who broke his ugly mug, in case he is.”</p><p>He’s on his feet again, this time with the help of two sets of hands. Each at an arm, he is dragged out of his prison and down what Hux assumes is either a sewer pipe or a hallway. His bare feet drag more than they walk, the drug making his muscles heavy and unwieldy, his tongue thick and putrid. He tries to count time but gives up after almost twenty minutes of stairs and switchbacks. Unless it is a straight shot, he’ll never be able to retrace the path taken. Understands, acutely, that was the point.</p><p>Hux only knows they’ve left wherever he was being kept behind by the taste of the air. Damp mildew is replaced by the heavy scent of cigg smoke, and something small and aching inside him clutches it like a comfort. The hands at his arms release him and his knees hit the ground with a crack, his head nearly following except for the hand that grabs his neck.</p><p>“Take his hood off.”</p><p>A new voice, Hux notes, though he still can not see even after the hood is pulled from his head. The light of the room floods too bright into his unprotected eyes no matter how much he blinks against the wet that collects. The tears are born from his over-sensitive light receptors rather than any emotional or physical discomfort, but only he would know the difference. These captors will not. If his muscles worked right he would scoff at the idea that these men will believe they’ve made him <em>cry</em>. But he is grateful for the Order’s rigorous anti-interrogation training; Hux does not doubt that anyone else would be a sobbing mess by now.</p><p>“Fuck, would you look at that.”</p><p>“It’s not him, he’s karking dead.”</p><p>“I don’t know man, the likeness is uncanny.”</p><p>“Naw, it’s close, but his nose isn’t right, you can tell by the-”</p><p>“-maybe that’s because you punched him too hard, Leto.”</p><p>“Fuck you, man. General Hux or not he’s still a fucking Imp, he deserved-”</p><p>“Shut up, both of you!”</p><p>The two bickering men quiet, leaving behind a silence that ticks by alongside a mechanical chrono rather than the drip drop of distant water.</p><p>“Leto, put this back on him. I want the holos to look like how we found him.” A shuffling sound of someone rummaging around in a bag.</p><p>Or a parka.</p><p>“You want me to free his hands?”</p><p>“You gave him the hypo didn’t you?”</p><p>“Yeah but-”</p><p>“Then fucking put it on him!”</p><p>Shadows have begun to take hold of the blinding brightness. Hux thinks he can make out the shape of the man who must be called Leto. Behind him, large hands wrench at his arms, forcing him to hunch forward as his wrists are pulled up to the blade edge of a knife. It cuts close enough to knick his skin. He bares his teeth against the sting and the sudden warmth that trickles down his palm, but his arms are being stuffed into his parka’s sleeves before he thinks anyone else notices. And then his head is being hauled up by a fist in his hair and Hux hears the quiet whine of a holo-recorder going off.</p><p>He doesn’t know how many recordings are taken. He can’t see anything beyond the shadowy shapes that drift through his peripheral vision. Suddenly he wonders if the drug they gave him affected his eyesight as well, or if the cuffs to his head have knocked something important loose. Panic wells distant beneath the surface of calm he’s been trained to maintain, and Hux thinks there are fates worse than blindness awaiting him - like the one where he gets shot through a metal gate to die alone in some cold damp cage where Poe will never find him.</p><p>Hux shuts down that train of thought. He is on his own. It will do no good to hope for anything, least of all that Poe is out there looking for him.</p><p>“Right, those should work. Leto, help me with this, would ya.”</p><p>For a moment, the hands at his shoulders retreat, and the shadows in his vision pull away. Hux slumps forward, wiping his half numb wrist against the parka and trying to determine how badly he is injured. It’s then that he feels the faint shape of something tucked deep into his pocket.</p><p>The tracker. It’s the fucking <em>tracker</em>.</p><p>Despite his fight against it, hope blooms warm in his chest, catching at his heart and making his pulse race. The voices of the men fall to the background, as Hux’s mind scaffolds together a loose plan. If he activates the tracker then maybe Poe will find him. As long as they aren’t too deeply buried under duracrete the tracker’s signal should reach a large enough circumference for Poe to eventually pick it up, if he's searching.</p><p>Slowly, he slides his hand into his pocket, finds the tracker and thumbs it on.</p><p>Relief floods with the force of a riptide even as he’s hoisted back up by his hair again, abruptly enough that he sucks in a gasp. And then someone has his face in their hands- is prying his teeth apart with gloved fingers and he doesn’t have the strength in his jaw to keep it closed, let alone bite.</p><p>“There’s a filling in the right spot, he’s had it removed.”</p><p>“Damn, I was kinda looking forward to ripping the tooth out.”</p><p>“I guess nothing is really stopping you-”</p><p>“-shut it, both of you. This isn’t some backwater credit runner, this is fucking Starkiller. Whoever wants him isn’t gonna to want to pay for his pieces.”</p><p>“That’s if anyone wants him at all.”</p><p>“Already have interest, they just want the proof first.”</p><p>“Yeah, some smuggler ring. What about the Republic, or the fucking Resistance? Hell, we could sell him to what’s left of the Empire! The credits we’ll get from-”</p><p>“You want to arrange a rendezvous with some Imps? Huh, Leto? Think we’ll walk out of that deal alive? The Republic would be no better. We’d be arrested before we left the damned system. Our safest bet is to sell him to the Runners and let them deal with the bigger ransom. The profit will be good. They’ve offered a fair price.”</p><p>Someone else grabs at his hair, wrenching him out of the big man’s grip to give his head a harsh shake. It jolts the tender spot at the back of his skull, forcing his neck into an unnatural angle so his swallow catches over his gasp. And when the weight of his half-numb body is hoisted up by only the connective tissue of his vertebra Hux can’t stop the breath that hisses past his teeth.</p><p>“If this motherfucker is who you say he is then he’s fucking <em>priceless</em>. And if I can’t get filthy rich off his skinny ass I at least want to knock a few teeth loose for all the trouble he’s caused!”</p><p>“Trouble? Leto, you think you wouldn’t be six feet under already if the Order hadn’t come through and wiped out the hammer boys? We’d all be fucking dead by now-”</p><p>“Oh, so now you’re grateful to this ginger fuck? Did you forget Lulu? Forget that he took my karking <em>daughter</em>-”</p><p>“Your bitch of a wife <em>sold</em> her, Leto. And you know she’d be dead with the rest of those kids if she hadn’t, mowed down with all the other carriers-”</p><p>“-<em>You take that back!</em>”</p><p>“-No, you dumb son of a-”</p><p>Suddenly, Hux is sprawled out on the ground. He can hear the dampened thunk of meat hitting flesh and the grunts of men fighting. He shouldn’t find it as amusing as he does that these men have reduced each other to blows, certainly not when a booted foot meets the side of his head and sends sparks through his already too bright vision.</p><p>“I’ll fucking kill him! He’s not worth the credits-”</p><p>Another kick, this time to his gut, and his breath leaves his lungs with a <em>whoosh</em>.</p><p>The boot might be different, but the blow lands familiar. They’re the kind that would have come from his father, born of a lesson he had failed to learn, long ago.</p><p>Instinctively, he manages to get his arms to his face before the next kick can break his nose. But the tread slides over his injured wrist to land on his neck instead and it’s worse than a Force choking, how badly he gags. Before anyone can stop him, Leto has his boot to his head, his face, his gut and his chest, a series of blows that feel as frenetic as they do desperate. The man is unhinged with emotion, and Hux is suddenly grateful for the drug dampening his physical senses. He’ll be hurting, tomorrow- if he manages to live through the night without Leto putting a bolt through his head.</p><p>The beating probably only lasts another ten seconds before Leto is wrestled into submission.</p><p>“Feel better?”</p><p>“Yeah, actually. I do.”</p><p>“Leto, you’re a karking <em>fool</em>.”</p><p>Hux whimpers when he hears the familiar snick of a lighter, breathes in deep the sweet scent of a freshly lit cigg. He wonders if they’d give him one, if he asked nicely.</p><p>But when Hux opens his mouth, the only sound his distended tongue can craft is a pathetic whine.</p><p>“Get him the fuck out of here.”</p><p>They don’t give him a cigg. They don’t give him so much as a drink of water, or a stale ration bar. They leave him in his cage, swept beneath the pall of the drug they inject him with, to surface thought in fleeting strokes of consciousness.</p><p>His place on the floor is dry enough. His hands have been zip-tied again, this time at his front, so he is able to curl into a fetal position which feels far more comforting than he would ever admit aloud. His ankles have, again, been secured together. And despite how much he wants to crawl to his corner and curl up, rather quickly he discovers it’s not worth the effort to move.</p><p>As his fingernails bite into the flesh of his palms, burrowing almost deep enough to draw blood, he thinks about Poe. He thinks that if Poe were actually coming, he would have found him by now. That the tracker’s battery will only last a handful of days, and that his time is surely running out.</p><p>And he again thinks about what it would feel like to have Poe's arms around him: a cage of warmth and touch that would be so different from this cold lonely one.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>That night, he dreams.</p><p>It’s a more usual occurrence since he traded stims in favor of caf, but the dreams that haunt Hux are never peaceful things. They’re nightmares born of life experiences far more gruesome than what his imagination could ever conjure, which is why when he comes aware of his surroundings it takes too long for him to parse dream from reality.</p><p>Sight returns and with it, the shape of his dream reveals itself. Around him lay the lifeless bodies of over a dozen children. They litter the floor like some hunter’s cast off bounty, skin blue and limbs cold where they press against him. <em>Died with all the other carriers</em>, he recalls immediately, except that does not explain why they wear the cadet uniform of the Academy. The very same he again wears. The uniform burns across his skin with the stripping of a pride he's not sure he ever actually felt, but still passed down in spirit to each of the children the Order collected from these Outer Rim settlements.</p><p>But these children are not at the Academy, and they have not died from a disease. These children have died to a blaster - to a violent barrage of wounds that speckle their bodies and the durasteel wall behind him. <em>I know this</em>, he can’t help but think even as he scrambles on his too skinny legs across the space to the far wall. But his mind refuses to work, and the details converge into one overwhelming feeling of impotence as he collapses into the corner to slide down to the floor. His voice comes out small, young, pathetic as he curls into the corner and cries.</p><p>But it’s not until the wet thunk of bootsteps echo up the tunnel-like hallway, and Hux turns to find himself confronted with bars hatching out a wall from the duracrete surrounding him, that he knows where he is, what <em>this </em>is, and that he is dreaming.</p><p>This is his cage.</p><p>And the person approaching is himself.</p><p>His shape bleeds out of the shadows. Too large and too pale and too bright to be him as he currently is. This man is tall and strong and wearing a general’s great coat that had long ago felt as earned as the scars on his palms. He levels a blaster on him. Eyes empty as he stares down the sight, the impending bolt at once feels like a mercy as much as it does a threat.</p><p>“Useless whelp,” he says in his father’s voice.</p><p>And then he shoots him.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>It’s actually the hypo to his neck that wakes Hux next. He sucks is a short, sharp breath that feels like swallowing knives before his body is plunged into that almost familiar miasma. His throat is as parched as his mouth, but the ache in his head alleviates almost immediately as the hypo’s drug floods his body.</p><p>There are only two men, this time, to collect him. Leto is missing from the group - or at least, if he was there he was remaining uncharacteristically quiet. Unlike last time, his captors don’t bother with his feet. Someone hauls him up over their shoulder, hands straying dangerously close to places Hux has never let anyone touch before. He wants to snarl at them to keep their hands to themselves. Wants to drop their face into his knee and then slide a knife between their ribs and leave them leaking out on that already leaky duracrete.</p><p>Instead, he hangs limp over a muscled shoulder as he is carried through the labyrinth of his prison, nothing but the heavy footfalls of his captors and his own labored breathing to remind him he is, at least, still alive.</p><p>But maybe not for long.</p><p>Again he is brought to that smoke-filled room. And again he is on his knees as his hood is removed with little care for the light that floods his over-sensitive vision. But unlike last time, sounds emerge from a great distance; slow lazy things that make shapes out of the shadows that pass through his peripheral vision. A man here. The chrono there. A shape of a hand that makes the sound of a gasp, and Hux thinks that’s strange only because hands don’t gasp, they hit - meaty, fleshy things that strike brighter than even the overwhelming luminosity of the room.</p><p>“What have you done to him?” The hand says in a thick outer rim accent as it pushes into his hair.</p><p>Right, so not a hit, this time. A wrenching at his scalp instead. Hux closes his eyes in anticipation, holds his breath for the pain that, strangely, never comes.</p><p>“One of my men got to him. Some personal vendetta. But it’s him. Same guy from the holos, feel free to check his teeth.”</p><p>A shuffling sound, close enough that Hux opens his eyes again even though all he can see are suggestions. He thinks he’s being looked at. It feels like it. Like something heavy is dragging across his skin and pulling him down. It makes Hux feel weaker than he already is, and his traitorous body sags into the hold the hand has on his hair.</p><p>It doesn’t tug him back up. It follows him as he sinks, a loose tether that clings to him just enough to keep him upright. Though it’s the voice that keeps him from drowning. There’s something comforting about it. Something as familiar as it is distant. A sound he knows in the same way this touch is unlike anything he has felt in the last several days - maybe ever - but feels uncompromisingly familiar.</p><p>“He can’t see me?”</p><p>“Neurotoxin, it’s temporary. Knocks 'em out good.”</p><p>“You’ve drugged him?”</p><p>“Had to. Nearly took out all my men when we found him.”</p><p>“I need to know what you gave him.”</p><p>“I dunno man, I’m not a chemist. Just the usual stuff. It’s all this shit moon can get its hands on.”</p><p>A shadow passes over Hux then. And when a warm pressure layers across his brow he realizes it’s the hand again. It’s warm and calloused where it shields his eyes.</p><p>“His pupils are blown open and he’s unresponsive,” the hand continues to speak. “How many doses have you given him?”</p><p>“Three? Four Maybe? One for every cycle he’s-”</p><p>“<em>Four</em> doses? Of some neurotoxin you don’t even know the <em>name</em> of?”</p><p>“Why do you care-”</p><p>Care? Hux wants to laugh, thinks he might have made the shape of the sound in his wretched throat. Wants to tell these men to give up because no one <em>cares</em> about him, not enough to come for him, let alone <em>pay</em> for him.</p><p>Another shuffling sound. More meaty this time, less gasping. The hand at his brow retreats, and light floods his vision again in a kaleidoscope of suns.</p><p>“Listen here, ’cause I am only going to say this once. Your sorry excuse for a cartel is lucky to be alive, let alone getting paid. And if you wanna keep both those things you’re gonna to do everything I tell you. Got it?”</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, I fucking get it.”</p><p>“Good. Here is what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna sit your sorry asses in this room for the next two hours. Me and him are gonna walk out of here alone, ‘cause the rest of the Runners are under orders to shoot anyone they see who isn’t me or that guy. You get half the credits up front now, and the other half will be waiting up top in a bag in the alley. You try to grab it before those two hours are up and my men shoot you. Anything happens to me or him during those two hours, we shoot you. It won’t matter how many credits you already got because you’ll be too dead to ever spend them. Have I made myself clear?”</p><p>“I fucking <em>get it</em>, kriffing hell man, I just want the money. That Imp is more trouble than he’s worth.”</p><p>The silence that follows stretches alongside the lazy click of the chrono. Hux can see time pass in the shadows that move through his vision, the largest of which must belong to the hand still in his hair. Its grip remains firmly seated, maybe a little tighter than before, but not to the point of pain. No, it anchors him into his body for the first time in days and Hux closes his eyes against the sensation - pushes down the screaming realization that he knows this hand, this <em>man</em>. But Hux trusts himself even less than he trusts the absurd reality that Poe Dameron has actually come to save him, even if that is exactly what is happening.</p><p>The clink of credits being counted shatters across his vision, as his whole world upends. Because it's true, Poe is here.</p><p>Poe has <em>come for him</em>.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Poe is not as strong as the big man. Neither is he as broad nor as tall. But while Hux <em>is</em> tall, he is neither big nor considered broad. In fact, Hux thinks of himself as small despite his height. Small in that his shoulders are too bony and his waist too slim. His legs too slender and his wrists too frail. Thin as a slip of paper, he’s been told, and right then he feels just as useless.</p><p>He is draped across Poe’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He keeps the shame at bay by telling himself this is all for appearances. Whatever bluff Poe is pulling off requires Hux to remain a captive for a little while longer, even if the hands Poe lays upon him are anything but those of a captor’s. It’s not like he and Poe could walk out of the smuggler’s den hand in hand (another absurd notion, but one Hux can not seem to shake).</p><p>The simple truth is that Hux is not capable of walking, and somehow Poe understands that without making a production of it. The darker truth is that Poe’s hands feel nice; just big enough, broad enough, and holding him in all the right places: an arm linked through his thighs to grip his wrist, leaving his opposite hand free to skirt over Hux’s shoulder, the length of his arm, the lank fall of his hair.</p><p>They’re comforting touches. Things that ground Hux in reality while his eyes stare sightless into a darkness that fluxes like the stretch of hyperspace across a viewport. If he were still in the Order and had any intel left to give up, he has no doubt he would succumb to an interrogation. His training had prepared him for things like pain, starvation, and even drugging. What it had never prepared him for was a caring touch after all of those things. If Poe were to ask, Hux would give him anything. Everything, as it were - or at least what little of worth he had left.</p><p>Instead, all Poe has asked of him is to tell him if anything is broken.</p><p><em>Too much,</em> he had not been able to say, words still lost to the bloated numbness of his tongue. But he had managed to shake his head. Because that much was true, though his body ached and his mind felt fractured into disparate pieces, he was, for all intended purposes, entirely whole. Still, when Poe had hoisted him over his shoulders, and trudged off into the bowels of this shit moon, Hux couldn’t help but think something important had been left behind.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Somehow, Poe manages to get him on a speeder. He only knows this because of the deafening whine that fills his foggy head. Each of his other senses, however, have converged onto the awareness of Poe against him. The shoulder beneath his cheek, the arm around his waist, the thighs that press alongside his own. And a hand, a big broad hand that is splayed over his chest, a breadth of pressure and warmth that seeps into his bones and chases away the wet chill.</p><p>By the time they reach Poe’s ship, Hux is aware of an acute fire in the tips of his ears that could be his nerves re-firing, or something else entirely. His senses are returning slowly, even though his vision continues to spark useless. He still can’t walk, but it’s enough that he can help hold himself upright in the copilot’s seat where Poe works to secure him. The harness is a poor substitute for Poe’s arms. He misses the warmth of his body, but understands it was only born of necessity, as are these last few fleeting touches of Poe’s hands as he straps him in.</p><p>Soon they will return to the base, and with it return to a normalcy that is, at least, painless if lonely. Poe will not bring him on another mission, because his cover is now compromised, exposed him for the failure he is. How <em>humiliating</em>, to be captured by some no-name group of Imp hunters, and sold back to the Resistance for a wealth of credits he knows them not able to spare. If he’s lucky, he’ll be able to work off his debt rather than be turned over to the New Republic for whatever bounty they are sure to set on his head.</p><p>Poe had trusted him, and he had repaid that trust by blowing their mission and then pillaging the Resistance’s coffers. It was bound to happen eventually. Hux can’t feel guilty when he has done nothing but try and warn them all this time.</p><p>A hand to his knee brings him out of his thoughts. Or perhaps he had fallen asleep. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, or how long Poe has been speaking to him. His head is still too foggy to understand what is being said. But he thinks he can hear something by way of the hand on his knee. It rubs gently, the thumb stroking the inside curve in a slow soothing melody. It takes several long moments before Hux comes aware enough to parse words from sound, longer still to understand those words because the hand on his knee is a distraction he is too weak to fight.</p><p>“Hey, Hugs, can you hear me?”</p><p><em>Yes</em>, he can not yet say, but he sighs with the intention.</p><p>“I’ve got doctor Kalonia on the horn, we’re trying to figure out what they gave you. I’m gonna have to touch you, okay?”</p><p><em>Please</em>, he thinks, and is suddenly glad for his lack of a voice, because he’s not sure he would not have uttered that aloud.</p><p>“Touch his hand, do his fingers feel particularly cold?” crackles over the comm.</p><p>“I’m gonna touch your hand now,” Poe tells him like he’s unsure he heard Kalonia. And even though Hux can not see, he still closes his eyes when Poe’s hand lifts from his knee to instead carefully take his hand into his own.</p><p>Poe’s touches are slow, but confident. He takes his time feeling his way over his fingers, stroking from the base to the tip until he’s mapped out the length of each, lingering over the spongy flesh with soft little squeezes, and then does it all over again. It's wonderful. And unnerving. And Hux is positive his stomach would have come up if there was anything left in it.</p><p>“Cold, they’re cold.”</p><p>“Alright, and his pulse, is it normal or slow?”</p><p>The touch moves back along his fingers, over the obviously scarred skin of his palm without comment, only to push up the cuff of his shirt sleeve and expose his wrist. When Poe’s hand circles the insubstantial width of it Hux feels more than exposed - he feels completely stripped down.</p><p>His thumb is gentle where it presses in, his fingers firm, his skin warm.</p><p>“A little slow, mostly normal.” And Hux thinks surely, that is a lie. Because his blood should be racing through his veins by the speed of which his heart pounds.</p><p>“Good, that’s good. Now I need you to check his lymph nodes in his throat and neck.”</p><p>“Okay-” and Hux swears he hears Poe’s voice catch. “Hear that, Hugs? I gotta touch your throat next.”</p><p>Hux opens his mouth to respond before he remembers he can’t. But Poe must have seen the reaction, because his hands are gentle where they settle on his shoulders.</p><p>“I’ll be quick and I’ll be careful, alright? Just relax, I only need to make sure they’re not swollen.”</p><p>It’s all the warning he’s given, before Poe’s very warm, and very gentle hands are upon him. They start at his ears, fingers pressing over the soft spaces where his jaw always catches at night. Here they circle slowly, before stroking inwards, until whatever Poe finds is to his satisfaction, and his attention moves to behind his ears. There he discovers tender places along his skull, places Hux has never been touched - not by himself and certainly not by another person.</p><p>No one has ever touched Hux like this. No one has ever tried, or ever asked - ever <em>wanted</em>. But it’s not like Poe wants to. He <em>has</em> to. Doctor Kalonia has requested it, even if that doesn’t explain how shallow Poe’s breath has become, or why it feels like Poe’s touch is anything but quick. It feels drawn out to a magnitude that will quickly become overwhelming if neither of them stop this.</p><p>Hux figures he has a perfectly valid excuse for not being able to stop this.</p><p>Poe moves towards the underside of his jaw next. It’s here that Hux suspects Poe is onto him, because his touch gentles to such a degree that Hux is suddenly grateful he can not see. He wouldn’t trust himself to hide anything - knows Poe would see <em>everything</em>, and then all of this would end.</p><p>“You doing okay?” Poe asks like Hux can answer. Then, “don’t worry, I’m almost done, I promise.”</p><p>Except then Poe’s breath hits his chin, and he realizes, suddenly, how close he is at the exact moment Poe dips his fingers into the soft place beneath his chin. Hux can not stop the <em>sound</em> that emerges from him. It’s broken and throaty, dragging out as involuntarily as the feelings now assaulting him from the reaches of his weakened mind.</p><p>Poe pauses immediately.</p><p>His fingers, however, remain right where they are.</p><p>“Did that hurt?” he asks, and Hux surprises them both when he breathes-</p><p>“-<em>No.</em><em>”</em></p><p>“<em>Hugs?</em>” the <em>pleasure</em> Hux thinks he hears in Poe’s voice sets his face to flame. “-you can talk?”</p><p>“Yes,” he pushes out, despite how much it hurts his throat, and then his heart, when Poe’s hands leave him.</p><p>“Is he speaking?”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah he is. Not much, but at least yes and no.”</p><p>“That’s great. Don’t push him, the neurotoxin probably just needs to run its course. Were his lymph nodes-”</p><p>“-nothing alarming that I could feel. Maybe a little swollen, but not obviously.”</p><p>“Okay. As long as he’s improving, that’s what we want to see. I’m mostly concerned about is his eyesight. Neurotoxin therapies are directed at the symptoms, there’s no treatment for the toxin itself. We need to protect his eyes while he’s healing, otherwise the damage to his optical nerves can become permanent.”</p><p>“Right, so like, a blindfold?”</p><p>“Could be helpful in situations where you can’t avoid bright light, but mostly he needs to be kept in a controlled environment. So dim lighting, not complete darkness. Certainly not sunlight, not until several days after he regains full sight in an ambient environment. I do not think it’s a good idea to bring him back to Ajan Kloss.”</p><p>Silence stretches the moment to near breaking, until Poe says, “A safe house. There should be something close, I wouldn’t have the coordinates-”</p><p>“I’ll have Rey look into it. We’ll choose somewhere with a polar twilight, or just several hours of sun a day. The most important thing is that he keeps improving. If some of his eyesight doesn’t return within the next seventy-two hours I will want to send him to a hospital within the Core.”</p><p>“Hear that Hugs? They’re finally letting us take a few days off,” said with a lilt of a joke, but Hux could hear something else beneath the surface - a concern - a <em>worry</em>.</p><p>He tries to scoff, thinks he manages a sneer, but whatever it is makes Poe laugh and again place his hand on his knee. It’s the most fleeting touch yet, but one Hux clings to in the same way he clings to the idea that Poe Dameron cares about him.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>The door to the safe house yawns open on sleepy hinges. It’s another no-name moon whose string of letters and numbers escapes Hux’s memory. All he knows is what information Rey sent over, which Poe had been kind enough to read to him. The moon lacks a dense atmosphere, enough that what daylight it is subjected to is dimmed by the low cast of polluted clouds which coil up from the mining operations taking place in the southern hemisphere.</p><p>Or, so he is told.</p><p>Hux can only identify that he is surface side by the taste of the air. It lacks the aseptic cleanliness of the transport’s air scrubbers, but it doesn’t taste like the pollution he expected. It tastes like earth and flora, like moss and lichen and water and salt. It tastes like that cage. And for one brief, terrifying moment Hux is convinced that is where he has returned. He staggers where he barely stands, body already dependent upon Poe. But Poe’s hands are upon him, catching him before he can fall, and Hux is too caught up in the sensation of them to care if this is that cage come back to haunt him. Not if it means Poe will keep touching him.</p><p>“Right here, just three steps down, I've got you.” Like his hands, Poe’s voice grounds him in reality, along with the truth that this is not that cage but the safe house. His feet are still bare, his kidnappers having never returned his socks or his boots, and Hux's toes sink into the damp moss covering the brick. It gives him some traction, helps him feel steady. Still, he holds fast to Poe as he maneuvers down the staircase. “I won’t let you fall, trust me.”</p><p>“I-” he abruptly cuts off. <em>I trust you</em>, he had almost said. Does he? Hux wishes the answer was simple. Wishes anything he felt towards Poe right then was simple. It is not. His emotions are as inexplicable as the shifting shadows that construct his vision. And every time he thinks he understands what he feels, or what he sees, everything shifts out of place again. “-I know,” he quickly pivots.</p><p>“Good.” Poe’s voice sounds like a smile, and his hands are as warm as the sun. Hux takes the offered excuse and grips them fiercely as he allows himself to be led.</p><p>Inside, the safe house earns its namesake. Even though he can’t see the shape of the walls or the room, there is something to the way sound moves through space that suggests a cozy sort of clutter. And immediately, Hux feels both comfort and the impression of a weight lifting. He lets Poe direct him to a couch. Notes when the floorboards beneath his feet transition into a thickly woven rug, and then into the soft fabric of the cushions. Beneath him, the couch swallows him whole. The padding is thick and spongy like pillows, softer than anything he has ever sat in, and immediately conforms to his shape. He lets his body sink down into it, lets his head fall to the side and his eyelids droop and his breath even, and it’s only then, relaxed into this unfamiliar couch, that Hux dare name what he is feeling.</p><p>Safe. He feels <em>safe</em> here.</p><p>Somehow, despite the last three cycles of his life bringing him perhaps the closest he’s ever been to death, he feels <em>safe</em>.</p><p>“I’m gonna check the supplies, start a fire, make sure we have what we need for a few days. You’ll be okay?” Poe’s voice is close, but it’s the hand on his knee again that feels closest. It's heavy with a comforting weight, thumb once again curled down over the inside joint. But unlike last time, Poe holds still, waiting. And not until the silence stretches to tenuous does Hux realizes Poe is waiting for him.</p><p>“I’m fine,” He breathes. He already is better. Not good, and not whole. But his body at least feels like it is reclaiming lost ground with every hour that passes. And while his eyesight might be gone, there is a sensitivity extended to his remaining senses that roots him into his body in a way not even the neurotoxin can interfere with. He’s never felt so intimately aware of himself before, and it’s strange to think a removal of a single sense was all that it took.</p><p>“Here, for while I’m gone.”</p><p>The gentle weight of a blanket settles over him. It’s as soft as the material of the couch, with a scent that reminds him of wood smoke. Very quickly, his skin grows warm beneath it. Quicker yet, his body begins to relax.</p><p>Poe’s footsteps fall heavy over the floorboards until the moment they don’t, when they’re quickly replaced with the gentle groan of old wood held together by worn out nails. His barefooted steps thump out a rhythm that sets a tempo to the passing time. Hux has no idea how long Poe spends exploring their temporary home. He hears the squeak of cabinetry, the quiet protestation of faucets being turned, and then the long continuous rush of water filling a basin.</p><p>The sounds create a sort of symphony in the back of Hux’s mind, something he can almost see in the shapes they take and the colors they make against the backdrop of his sightless eyes. The floorboards stretch in a slow, shallow arch, the cabinets strike like sparks, and the water rushes soothing like wind carrying leaves. And through it all, Poe’s footsteps sound like the pulsing echo of a heartbeat.</p><p>And that’s how he falls asleep, warm beneath a smoke-scented blanket, listening to Poe orbit around him, his presence reaching Hux like the distant rays of a rising sun.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>He wakes to the crackle of a fire, and the knowledge that he is not alone.</p><p>Of course, Poe is present. It’s just that for some reason Hux had not expected him to be so <em>close</em>. But there he is, sat on the floor, back to the couch, his shoulder brushing Hux’s knee while his hair tickles the edge of his palm. Desperately, Hux wishes he could see. More so, he wants to see what they look like together. Wants to be an outside observer framing a picture out of this moment, when Hux can almost pretend this is normal - their normal. Like normal is a thing he and Poe can create together.</p><p>Instead, he shifts where he’s curled, sucking in a breath when pain lances through his body in pulsating sparks.</p><p>His breath is reduced to a gasp, even before Poe lays a hand on him.</p><p>“Damn, sorry Hugs. I knew I shouldn’t have let you fall asleep on the couch.”</p><p>“I’m fine,” he pushes past the pain. Quickly, the sparks are fading to burns, to be replaced by the drag of knives. Every point of contact against his skin stings like a fever, and the urge to strip himself of the blanket and then his clothes nearly overwhelms him. “I think I need- is there something- a change of clothes? Everything feels-”</p><p>“Over-sensitive?” Poe’s voice has come closer, nearly as close as his hands. Poe is touching his forehead like it’s the secret to why he feels this way. Really it just makes Hux ache with something that is not pain. Where Poe touches him discomfort fades, to the extend that Hux doesn’t trust that it’s not the toxin but his very body which is betraying him. “You don’t have a fever, so that’s good. Kalonia warned me that might happen, it’s your nerves repairing. You’ll be overly sensitive to touch, but it shouldn’t last. She recommended a bath to help, if you feel up for it?”</p><p>“A bath,” he breathes out like it is something forbidden. It strikes him suddenly that he hasn’t bathed in <em>days</em>, and it must be Poe’s ineffable good-nature which has prevented him from insisting upon it earlier. “Yes, a bath would be divine.”</p><p>It’s not until he’s down to his briefs that Hux realizes exactly what he has gotten himself into. But Poe says nothing when he bends down to help slide them off, nor when he grips Hux's arms to help him climb into the soaking basin. The water is just at the edge of hot, crawling across his skin in a soothing flush. He hears himself sigh as he settles in, and again is grateful that he can not see. The lack of his eyesight allows the moment to cast surreal across his thoughts. Because it can’t actually be Poe here playing nurse to his broken body. And it’s certainly not Poe tucking a folded up towel behind his neck so he can recline. And there is no way in sith hell it’s Poe cradling his hand, thumb smoothing over the knife wound to his wrist as he pours water over the half-healed cut.</p><p>“This wasn’t-”</p><p>“No, it was not.”</p><p>“Good. I mean, I don’t want to pry-”</p><p>“One of my captors got me with their knife.”</p><p>Silence folds over the moment again, only the gentle sound of the faucet dripping painting shapes in the shadows. It takes Hux back to that cage and memories that had felt so far away despite that it’s been less than a cycle since they were his reality. Long ago Hux had become good at this - taking his pain and tucking it neatly into order, into a shape his mind could fit somewhere just out of reach. But the drip of the faucet sounds too much like the drip of the pipe, and his mind is still too fragile to maintain the shapes his pain needs to take in order to stay beneath his surface. And very quickly it all spills free in words he did not ever intend to share.</p><p>“Thank you for coming after me.”</p><p>Poe is quiet, if not silent, thumb still tracing his wrist.</p><p>Eventually, he says, “You don’t have to thank me, Hugs. You’re-” he breaks off with a sigh, and Hux imagines he is staring across the room at the fire, trying to parse his thoughts into words that won’t lead Hux down the path he's already started upon. The path which leads to something Hux well knows is not marked on whatever map he's been provided. Except, that would not explain what Poe says next, “-You’re very important to me. I need you to know that.”</p><p>“Important,” Hux breathes it out, tasting. It’s not a <em>bad</em> word. Not a bad word at all.</p><p>“When I realized you’d been taken…”</p><p>“They nearly didn’t,” he's compelled to clarify, “I had them, they got lucky.”</p><p>“I know, I’ve seen you in a fight.” Poe’s chuckle is a little edged, a little forced, but his hands remain gentle where they touch him. He has something in his hand. A sponge, Hux realizes, and as he draws it over the skin of his wrist he says, “Finally got my chance to do the saving, I guess.”</p><p>“We can’t have your golden reputation come under suspicion, can we?”</p><p>“Now you’re onto me, have I reached my hero quota yet?”</p><p>“I’d say you’ve exceeded it. Quite the over-achiever, in fact,” said as he gestured to the space around them. That does cause Poe to release a genuine laugh.</p><p>“So this isn’t earning me any bonus points?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t say that.”</p><p>Only after the words leave his mouth does he realize what he’s implied. And he imagines if the lights weren’t turned down low and the heat of the water hadn’t already flushed his skin, that his blush would be obvious.</p><p>But Poe says nothing. Though Hux can feel the weight of his stare in almost the same way he can feel the sponge inch its way up his forearm.</p><p>The next several minutes pass in a tenuous peace. Hux says nothing about the fact that Poe has taken it upon himself to bathe him, and Poe says nothing of the marks that litter Hux’s skin. The sponge passes over them carefully, mapping out the battlefield that is his body in the path it takes to each, new and old wounds given equal attention. But when the sponge skirts up his neck to his cheek, Hux grimaces with a pain that is out of place within the calm placidity they’ve fallen into.</p><p>“Sorry,” Poe murmurs, though the sponge remains where it is: pressed gently over the whole of the wound.</p><p>“That bad?”</p><p>“They missed your eye, but you’ve got a gash. It’ll need some bacta. We have some, I’ll take care of it after.”</p><p>“And the rest?”</p><p>“Well,” Hux thinks he can hear the smile he can not see, “mostly bruising, but overall I’d say it’s an improvement.”</p><p>Hux can’t stop his laugh, it bursts from him along with the tension of the moment, so that he and Poe are laughing together. He is still smiling by the time their laughter has tapered off and Poe’s sponge has moved to his other cheek, rubbing gently at whatever blood and grime has collected there. Unconsciously, he leans into the touch, like it were Poe’s palm and not the sponge at his cheek. The idea coils tight inside him with a longing he’s finding harder and harder to suppress, and a willpower that fades with each small moment of Poe’s careful attention.</p><p>But something tells Hux that this is not entirely him. Because while he’s not so helpless that he can’t wash himself, instinct tells him Poe needs this. Like this is his way of making up for not being able to protect him. As if his kidnapping was all from some failing on Poe’s part. It’s not. It’s one of the many risks they each take every time they leave on a mission. But he doesn’t know what to say to alleviate Poe’s guilt, and he is too weak to deny himself the attention Poe seeks to give. And he thinks maybe there is a balance to be struck somewhere between what they both need, and what each is willing to give, and maybe accept.</p><p>He ends up leaning forward so Poe can reach behind his ears and down his neck, and before he really registers what is happening, Poe is pouring water through his hair. The sensation of warmth sliding over his scalp sends a shiver down Hux’s spine, and he can’t stop the soft moan that crawls up his throat.</p><p>“Feel good?” Poe asks softly enough for it to almost sound intimate.</p><p>“Absolutely wretched,” Hux responds, because sarcasm is so much easier than the truth.</p><p>“Here, maybe this will help.”</p><p>And then Poe’s fingers replace the water, and Hux almost - <em>almost</em> breathes out an affirmation that, yes, that is so much <em>better</em>.</p><p>Poe’s fingers slide over his scalp as he distributes soap, the tips dragging with just enough friction that Hux has to bite his lip from making another sound. He gently works through the grime, until Hux can feel how smoothly his hair slides between his fingers, but still he doesn’t stop. Poe draws it out, pulling fingers down his scalp in a slow pattern of touch that has Hux breathing heavily enough that he is certain Poe must hear.</p><p>“Close your eyes,” Poe says from somewhere behind his shoulder, close enough that his breath brushes past Hux's ear. And then there are fingers under his chin, tilting his face up, and it’s all Hux can do to obey.</p><p><em>Is this when he kisses me?</em>  Hux can’t stop himself from thinking. It is not. Poe pours water through his hair, fingers following in long gentle strokes. It feels good. So good that he’s trembling by the time Poe rinses away the last of the soap. And his heart pounds out a rhythm that is far louder than any sound his breath could ever make. Because while it may not be a kiss, it feels just as intimate, and Hux can’t tear himself from the pressure of Poe’s fingers still there under his chin.</p><p>When it’s all over, and the bath is drained and Poe has toweled him dry and he’s back on the couch in a fresh set of clothing, bacta cooling on his cheek and the fire catching sparks in his peripheral vision, Hux finds himself thinking. He thinks of how those fingers had felt. Their warmth and their careful accedence to his comfort and his boundaries. And he imagines what it would be like if they tilted his head back not for the rinse of water, but for that kiss. And when he lifts his hand to press his fingers to his lips, there is absolutely no denying that is exactly what he wants.</p><p>And as Poe settles onto the couch beside him, and he gathers his hands into a cradle for the bowl of soup he has prepared, Hux finds he wants to trust in the map of events that have brought them both here. And turns over the idea that the path they’re headed down leads somewhere they can continue to go together.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>He’s dreaming, again. A variation of the same dream he always has. Except this time, as his father’s boot finds his face and the split in his lip leaks metallic between his teeth, he’s only half expecting it when the kicks recede to be replaced by that wet aching cold. It’s just as horrifying as last time. And Hux wishes he wasn’t as lucid as he was - wishes he could close his eyes and return to a world where he didn’t have to see this: bodies cast in blue, the shape of his cage framed black against the dim ambient light.</p><p>And like last time, he has no where to go. No where to hide, when the figure down the hall approaches. Hux pushes himself upright. And also like last time, he scrambles over the bodies, the roughshod gabberwool of the cadet uniforms dragging like sandpaper over his skin so that the cold of the wall leaches like relief when he collapses against it. He wedges himself into the far corner, pressing his back into the crevice like the walls might swallow him whole if he pushed hard enough. They won’t. They didn’t last time and he doesn’t actually expect them to behave any differently the second time around.</p><p>The man is the same from before. He can’t meet his own gray-green eyes, instead watches the curl of smoke twine from the end of his cigg, and holds his breath as the blaster lifts to aim. It doesn’t take its shot. It hovers there, like a threat, and then like a fear. Like the version of himself on the other side of the bars is just as scared and terrified of what he sees locked away in this cage. Only then does Hux lift his eyes to meet his own stare.</p><p>“What are you doing in there?” asked in an imperial accent he knows too well.</p><p>“Aren’t you-” he gestures at the lowering blaster, “-aren’t you going to shoot me?”</p><p>“Why would I do that?” and the inflection changes, just enough- bleeds surprised, like he doesn’t understand.</p><p>“You did last time.”</p><p>“Why would I shoot <em>myself</em>?”</p><p>“Because-” his own voice has taken an edge, because this isn’t how this is supposed to go, “-because I’m- because <em>you</em><em>’re</em>-”</p><p>“I’ve come to get you out.”</p><p>“But-”</p><p>“It’s your choice,” said simply, with a shrug, with an exhale of smoke that curls sweet and herbal. “Trust me or not. But it’s your choice.”</p><p>His choice.</p><p>Hux wakes with a gasp.</p><p>And to the touch of fingers on his cheek.</p><p>“Wake up, Hugs-”</p><p>“I’m awake. I’m- I-”</p><p>“You were having a nightmare.”</p><p>Poe’s voice is close, almost as close as his touch, and Hux gropes out for him before he can think better of it. His hand closes around the fabric of his shirt, over his chest. Beneath his grip, Poe’s body heat has collected against his skin, all sleep-warmed and a little moist. Hux wants fiercely to have that warmth pressed close against his own shivering body, finds himself tugging at the fabric as if he could will it to happen. The desire runs rampant through his sleep-addled brain, catching at his mind like the lingering dream, until Hux can’t parse what is real from what his imagination has conjured, particularly when Poe is nudging him aside to make room in the bed.</p><p>When Poe climbs under the covers, Hux is sure he is still dreaming.</p><p>When Poe gathers him into his arms, he’s sure this is turning into another one of those cruel, torturous nightmares.</p><p>But then Poe asks, “Is this okay?” so, so quietly, and Hux has to confront that this is neither a dream nor a nightmare, but very much his reality. It is enough to reduce him to the same wretched creature that had crawled across the floor of that cage, seeking a comfort that had been denied him - that he has denied himself, for far too long.</p><p>He presses into Poe, clutching his shirt as he uses it to drag himself closer, and his voice only shakes a little when he answers, “Yes. Yes, this is okay.”</p><p>Poe’s sounds absolutely worn thin when he says, “Here, come here, closer, like this.” And then Poe is directing his body, drawing his arm around his waist, and his knee between Poe’s legs, while sliding a hand into his hair to guide his face into the crook of his neck. And only after Poe has maneuvered him into place does he bring his arm tightly around him, holding Hux to this thing that feels so good it has to be impossible. So impossible, Hux is outright shaking by the time he finally accepts that this is all real, all his, given freely to him by Poe.</p><p>He breathes into it. Poe's scent and his warmth and the soft sigh of his breath flooding what senses Hux has left. And very quickly, despite the trembling of his limbs, he feels himself calm. Their bodies come together as if they were made to fit, in a touch Hux has never known from anyone. Because hands are made for hitting, and boots for kicking, and no one has ever touched Hux like this.</p><p>It should not be so easy, Hux thinks, to fall asleep together. But despite how his body sings with the breadth of Poe’s attention, he feels the drag of his exhaustion as keenly as he feels the weight of Poe’s arms where they circle him, and the spill of Poe’s warmth where it now collects between them, and the softness of his skin where his lips brush his neck. And as his heart slows and his breath evens and Poe’s body eases comfortable against his, sleep comes for him quickly.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>He knows it’s morning because he can hear birdsong through what must be a window above the bed. His sight is no better than it was yesterday, and he’s growing strangely accustomed to the limitations it has put upon his ability to sustain self-sufficiency. Or, that’s the excuse he’s given himself for the reason he has remained in bed, pressed against Poe’s body in what some (though certainly not him) might call a cuddle.</p><p>Poe is asleep. Hux only knows this because he’s seen Poe asleep before: at his cockpit, in his transport’s bunk, and the rooms they’ve shared during their missions. And though he can’t <em>see </em>Poe now, not in the traditional sense, he can paint a picture from the sounds he hears, and the skin he can trace beneath his fingertips.</p><p>His breath comes even and shallow, slow enough that Hux can count seconds between each gentle exhale, and feel the brush of its warmth against his skin. He fell asleep facing Poe and that seems to be how they have remained: tucked into each other, legs tangled together, Poe’s draped weighty atop Hux’s thigh, his own nudged up between Poe’s knees. Here in bed, their differing heights hardly make a difference. In fact, Poe’s wider bulk makes Hux feel particularly small, as if this close, Poe has grown out of proportion. His wide shoulders make the blanket cascade down upon Hux’s narrow body like a waterfall from a mountaintop. It causes their shared body heat to collect in the tented drape of fabric, and Hux uses that to his advantage as he shifts ever closer to Poe’s chest.</p><p>He’s not used to being this close to another person, which is another excuse he gives himself for why he can not stop himself from touching Poe. Beneath his hand, Hux has found Poe’s chest. He does not recognize the shirt Poe wears. It’s too soft to be his white linen button-down, and too thin to be the heavier sweater he sometimes wears during their colder missions. This shirt barely hides his skin, because Hux finds it easily when his fingers walk a path up from where they had been splayed over his belly. Poe’s skin is warm, almost hot. Like silk, the hair soft, not coarse, stretched over muscles relaxed to a firm bed of flesh that is so unlike Hux’s own thin bony body.</p><p>Over his chest Hux lingers, fingers stroking lightly like Poe had done to him yesterday with the sponge. Suddenly, he wishes he could see. Wants to observe Poe in this way, wrapped up as they are with one another, bodies so close they are more touching than they are apart. But his vision is still nothing but vague shadowy shapes at his edges. And this close, Poe is nothing but a presence that looms rather than a figure he can trace. So he uses his hands instead. Sees with them what his eyes can not. And maybe there is something to this he can appreciate, when it’s this touch that has eluded Hux for so long, while Poe has always been nothing but generous with his presence in Hux’s life, like a sun he can not escape.</p><p>Along his collarbones, Hux comes to Poe’s clavicle. It dips deep into a pulse point Hux stills over, marveling at the rate of which it throbs. It’s faster than Hux would have anticipated, and he follows the path it takes up his throat to where his stubble has grown rough under his chin. Hux knows he should stop now. Knows he will wake Poe soon if he is not careful, but now that he has come so far he can not stop. As if of their own accord, his fingers walk up over Poe’s chin, to the little dip beneath his lip and beyond, skipping his lips in favor of his cheek and then down his jaw. Poe is all wide planes and elegant angles, soft and rough in equal measures, and when his fingers skirt his temple to find his hair, he can’t help but twine a lock around his finger. It's so <em>soft</em>-</p><p>Poe takes a breath, a shallow little gasp that gives him away.</p><p>Poe is awake.</p><p>And Hux is confronted with the sudden realization that he has been awake for some time.</p><p>Slowly, he uncurls his finger. Slower yet he withdraws his hand.</p><p>But Poe does not let him get far. Very quickly his hand is captured, and is being guided back into place against Poe’s face, where it is held: his palm to Poe’s cheek, Poe’s hand covering his.</p><p>“Morning, Hugs.”</p><p>Hux can’t stop the tremble in his hand, knows there is no way to hide it with how firmly it's held. Thankfully, his voice is entirely steady when he responds, “Good morning, Poe.”</p><p>“Yeah, it is.” And Hux would have known he was smiling even if he couldn't feel the bloom of it under his palm, “don’t stop on my account.”</p><p>“How long have you been awake?” he accuses even as his thumb catches the corner of Poe’s grin. The muscle is deeply crevassed there, eroded by a lifetime of smiles just like this one. But Hux can not feel anything but pleasure over the fact that it is him who has carved this one into place.</p><p>“Since you nearly tickled me when you touched my stomach.”</p><p>He’d been awake the <em>entire time</em>.</p><p>Hux knows he is flushing, but Poe doesn’t say anything, just strokes his thumb over the back his his hand where they are still held together.</p><p>“It’s okay, though. You can keep touching me,” and then, a little quieter, “I liked it. I didn’t mean to make you stop.”</p><p>Hux breathes out, sharp. Pauses, and then asks so softly he’s not sure Poe will hear, “Will you close your eyes?”</p><p>“Of course,” said as Poe takes his hand and carefully threads their fingers together. He holds his hand as he turns his face into his palm to drop a single kiss to the inside of Hux’s wrist.</p><p>Time slows. Idles in echoing moments long after Poe’s lips have pulled away. And when Poe guides Hux’s hand to where his eyelashes flutter atop his cheeks, he is shaking.</p><p>Hux is left to explore on his own. To follow Poe’s brow where it arches smoothly up into his hairline. Down the center of his forehead to where the bridge of his nose dips in, and then flares out, until it terminates right above his lips. Lips which Hux at first thought he would avoid but now can not resist. Maybe it should be weakness, but Hux only feels brave when his fingertips trail the stubble above Poe's cupid’s bow, before sliding down over the parted purse of his lips. There, Hux carefully layers his fingers atop their softness, so the spill of Poe’s breath finds its way between each. He imagines what Poe’s face must look like in the image his fingers have painted: brows relaxed, hair tousled, eyelashes long and thick over flushed warm cheeks, and a smile so genuine it can not be hidden - not when Hux feels it spread wide beneath his fingertips. His fingers are trembling so hard now he can't seem to make them stop.</p><p>Because there is no denying any longer where this is all leading. What his touch is asking, and what he now knows Poe will gladly give him, if he asked.</p><p>“Poe,” he whispers, voice a small caged thing that claws its way free. And then he replaces his fingertips with his lips in an action so bold he's afraid it might break him. Poe’s lips are soft, warm, unmoving, but he can hear the hitch in Poe’s breath, feel the quick spill of it past his teeth, and the body beneath his touch coils as tightly as his own. It all leaves Hux breathless, and he has to pull away, quickly pressing his fingers back to Poe’s cheeks to know Poe’s smile.</p><p>It has, somehow, grown impossibly wider.</p><p>“Armitage,” Poe breathes his name like a sigh. And then fingers slide up under his chin, and he is tipped into the soft press of Poe’s kiss.</p><p>It’s both everything and nothing like what Hux expected. All the heat of their breath, and the velvet of Poe’s yielding lips, as he is held to a gentle pressure that slips past Hux defenses so much easier than a boot or blaster bolt. He is shaking again - or maybe he never really stopped - as Poe moves languid against him. His hand slides from his chin to bury into his hair, cradling the back of his head as Poe pulls away just enough to brush their lips together. He changes his angle, and then presses in closer, holding Hux to a kiss that is surely too impossible to be real. Hux's breaths are coming ragged, heating to hot between them, as his heart races into a flutter that has his skin flushing warm. And then he is moving against Poe, mouth parting with a soft sound as his whole body is wracked by a shiver.</p><p>“Okay?” Poe murmurs against his mouth while his fingers rub gently into his scalp. Hux can only respond by chasing Poe’s lips, pressing against Poe in what he hopes is an inviting way, and not desperate. Poe’s hand twitches where it holds him, and then he is nuzzling forward, as his other arm comes around his waist to haul the whole of his body closer. Poe's mouth opens enough that his tongue can touch Hux's lips, and Hux is shaking again, hands holding fast to their hold on Poe as his mouth opens to him.</p><p>Their tongues meet so slow and gentle Hux can't help but moan.</p><p>Where Poe’s body meets his Hux feels his edges blur. Maybe it’s the lingering neurotoxin, or maybe it is all these unfamiliar touches, but his senses spill against Poe in a tenacious build up of sensation. Where their skin meets his flesh burns hot, and the sound of their mingled breath rushes loud through his ears. But it’s the taste of Poe’s mouth, clean and slick against his, and the scent of his skin so close to Hux’s own that pushes him past overwhelming. It converges upon him all at once, when the fingers Poe has in his hair slide down to cup the back of his neck, and Poe angles his head in such a way that his tongue fully enters Hux’s mouth.</p><p>It’s intimate. Intimate and wonderful and entirely too much for Hux to maintain. He gasps <em>‘stop’</em> into Poe’s mouth, then makes a broken sound, as his body trembles so hard he doesn’t have a choice when the kiss breaks. He wants to scream, instead buries his face in Poe’s neck with a frustrated hiss. Pants raggedly into the skin there, while his fist clenches tightly into his shirt as he shakes apart in Poe’s arms. He's incredibly hard, and Poe has to be aware of the erection pressed into his thigh.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Poe quickly assures. “We can stop.”</p><p>“I apologize-”</p><p>“Don’t you dare,” Poe sounds close to breaking. He pulls away enough to get his fingers back under Hux’s chin, which in turn sends a jolt through Hux’s already over-sensitized body. But the fingers remain, anchoring him in the moment, firm in the way they tilt Hux’s face up so Poe can, he assumes, look at him. Hux has no idea what he sees - what he is looking for, or whether he finds it. But when his lips brush Hux’s cheek, then his brow, before settling against his forehead, Hux thinks he must have seen <em>something</em>.</p><p>And for all the sight Hux has lost, he feels like, for the first time, he is seeing things clearly.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Now that the barrier has been broken, Hux discovers that Poe possesses an acute inability to keep his hands to himself. His touches are bestowed like the rays of a sun, inescapable whenever Hux is within range of his orbit.</p><p>He’s seated at a table, the rickety wooden chair loosely held together by joints that groan each time he shifts. It’s colder in this part of the safe house, more drafty, and too far from the hearth for the fire to provide any warmth. So Poe has placed a blanket over his lap, and a mug of caf in his hands, as he prepares a breakfast that smells more like second meal, but is just as enticing to his stomach which rumbles empty.</p><p>Poe keeps coming over to the table to check on him: gives refills to his caf, pushes fingers through his hair, places cutlery at each seat, runs a hand down his back. Hux maintains his apathetic disposition for the lark alone, because he knows his blushes are obvious, and he leans into each of Poe’s touches despite the half-sneer on his face.</p><p>And it's all so easy. Comfortable. Like they’re back in the transport, sharing a cigg while hyperspace fluxes across the viewport; or sitting at a bonfire, like one of those paired off couples who are there for the fire and not for the prospect of finding a new partner. Hux doesn’t even flinch when Poe takes his hand to place a spoon between his fingers. Allows without hesitation for Poe to guide him to where the bowl sits, so Hux can take his own food in hand and feed himself.</p><p>That he trusts Poe occurs to him with very little shock or unease. He is surprised, more than anything, by how easily he accepts it.</p><p>“This is good,” he says of the food, because it is. It’s rice and fish and re-hydrated vegetables seasoned lightly and served with a soft egg. Simple and sustainable, the sort of food they might have served in the Order's mess, and the sort of which he had grown up eating. It reminded him mostly of the stuff his mother would make him, the same sort of fish and rice combination. A comfort, one that Hux had not expected, let alone to experience so strongly.</p><p>It hits him then: where he is, and how far he has come. Not just from that cage on that moon, but here, eating at a table with Poe Dameron, a man he had once called his enemy, the shadow of the Order cast so long as to have tapered off into a faded memory, bleached out by the light of a sun he believed had long set on his future. It strikes him, quite suddenly, that he is not just safe, but that he has been saved. And that the man sitting across from him has played no small part in all the ways that holds true.</p><p>He doesn’t realize he’s even dropped his spoon until he hears it clatter to the floor.</p><p>“Hugs,” Poe is at his side instantly, knelt to the floor if the position of his voice is anything to go by. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he says a little sheepishly. “I’ve become emotional.”</p><p>A beat of silence, then, “Yeah, I can see that,” and <em>he</em> can see the tentative smile in the cadence Poe’s voice takes.</p><p>“It will pass.”</p><p>Poe laughs, then, “Tell me what you’re feeling?”</p><p>A question Hux has spent his whole life avoiding. He had learned at an early age that most emotion was wasted energy. His father’s boot had taught him that much. Very little besides anger and fear and grief could be utilized into productivity, and even those three were best left to be experienced by others, to be manipulated by a knowing hand. And while he had grown quite good at controlling his emotions, he’d never quite managed to master giving them up.</p><p>And he most certainly had no experience <em>talking </em>about them.</p><p>But as strange as it was to admit, he wanted to.</p><p>“Relief, I think. And gratitude.”</p><p>“That makes sense, you went through a lot back there-”</p><p>“Not just that,” he clarifies quickly, because he wants Poe to know how he feels, to <em>understand</em>, “for everything.”</p><p>It’s simple, more simple than what they both probably deserve, but he thinks it says enough.</p><p>Poe is quiet as he remains knelt beside his chair. But Hux can hear the thoughts going through his head - not what they are, but that they exist. And he hears the tentative pitch to the words he strings together, when he says, “We probably should have grounded you when you defected, Hugs. This kind of stuff, it’s important. Sometimes I forget how things must have been for you in the Order. I’m sorry we haven’t given you the time to work through it.”</p><p>He does sneer then.</p><p>“Like I would have allowed you to <em>ground</em> me. We both know I would have stolen the first transport I could get my hands on if you’d tried to relegate me to <em>reconditioning,</em>” he spits the word good-naturedly.</p><p>“We call it therapy,” and there is no missing the smile in his voice. And then the spoon is back in his hand, Poe’s fingers guiding his to curl back around the handle. They linger, long enough for the moment to stretch to a memory, before finally pulling away.</p><p>Hux rolls the spoon between his fingers, takes a shallow breath, and speaks, “It <em>is</em> good.”</p><p>“What is?”</p><p>“The food. I like it, the simple flavors, the textures,” he pauses, “I like what it makes me feel. A comfort food, correct?”</p><p>“Yeah,” spoken roughly, like a well-worn hinge, “a comfort food.” Poe falls silent again, but the hand he places on his knee says more than enough.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>He is left alone while Poe returns to their transport, to make a call to Kalonia regarding his progress. His eyesight remains unchanged but the rest of his motor functions have greatly improved, so he spends his time alone performing the calisthenics routine he’d learned in basic. It’s one of the few things from the Order he has refused to give up. Privately, he likes to think at least this gentle aerobic activity is not harmful in the same way so much else of the Order had been. Half of him still expects Poe to be horrified when he discovers it.</p><p>Instead, Poe sounds nothing but surprised, “I didn’t know you did yoga.”</p><p>Or maybe he's impressed? It's enough to paint a blush across Hux's cheeks. “Yoga?” He demurs.</p><p>Seated on the floor, he’s bent sideways over his extended leg, spine twisted so his chest nearly faces the ceiling, the arm stretched over his head reaching far enough that he can hold his foot. His heart rate pounds out a steady rhythm, and he breathes into the space he’s created in his body. It’s almost curious, how different this familiar position feels. He’s not sure if its his enhanced senses or a side effect of the neurotoxin, but his body thrums with energy that moves through the shape he makes. And when he slides out of it, to switch to the other side and do it all over again, he can feel how open his body has become. Relaxed, comfortable, confident.</p><p>Perfectly in tune to his surroundings, and the proximity of Poe where he has taken a seat before him, to place himself between him and the fire.</p><p>“Yeah, yoga. Did you learn it in the Order?”</p><p>“We call it calisthenics, but yes, it was part of basic training. Body weight exercises are something you can perform anywhere, without dependency on a training room or a lot of space. They are also useful for clearing one’s mind, like a moving meditation.”</p><p>“Huh,” Poe’s voice is a little closer, like he’s leaned in towards where Hux is twisted. He can’t help but smile as he imagines Poe resisting the urge to reach out and touch him. “I didn’t think the Order was into things like that, meditation, mental health, you know.”</p><p>“In that respect, I am hardly the poster boy for the Order’s health initiatives, but we did emphasize the positive virtues of accepting ones position and fulfilling it to the best of your ability. Meditation was a tool recommended to help achieve that. A calm mind is a focused mind.”</p><p>“You know who meditates a lot?”</p><p>“Don’t you dare.”</p><p>“Force users.”</p><p>“That’s <em>entirely</em> different.”</p><p>He releases the hold he has on his foot, lifts upright out of the twist, and reaches out to where he thinks Poe is. His hand is caught before it makes contact, Poe’s fingers holding him lightly there in mid air. In his peripheral vision, he can see the flux of bright light that is the hearth, and he wonders if he angles his head just right, if he could see their entwined hands silhouetted against it.</p><p>“Are you looking at the fire?” Poe asks after a beat of hesitation.</p><p>“I’m trying, but it’s only light in my peripheral, I can not actually see it.”</p><p>“Well, you’re staring right into it.”</p><p>His hand slips free when Poe stands, but not before it’s given it the gentlest, tiniest squeeze. It sends a jolt of nerve fire straight into his belly, like this little sign of affection were as intimate as what they shared that morning. He wants more. Habit has him looking over his shoulder even though he knows full well he can not see where Poe has gone. But it must not have been far, because Poe’s fingers brush his hair before Hux can so much as ask where he is going.</p><p>“Kalonia said you needed to protect your eyes while they’re healing, I don’t think staring into a fire is what she meant,” said as his fingertips slide over his scalp, “so, I made this for you, just in case. Give me your hand?”</p><p>Hux lifts his hand without thinking, as if Poe’s request had been a command, and if he obeyed he might get more of these small touches. But when a strip of fabric is placed in his hand, his mind spirals to other, deeper, darker desires that he hadn’t yet confronted he harbored.</p><p>“Is this a blindfold?” Somehow his voice only sounds incredulous and not intrigued, as he fingers his way over the fabric. It’s soft, thin, stretchy, and seamlessly sewn into a loop to eliminate the discomfort of a knot.</p><p>“Yeah,” said with, Hux imagines, a cheeky grin. “You don’t have to, if it makes you uncomfortable. But I think it’s a good idea.”</p><p>“Doctor’s orders?” He drawls. The sarcasm keeps the tremble out of his voice, so Hux plays into the charade.</p><p>But Poe doesn't say anything, and Hux’s mind wanders in the same way his fingers do over the blindfold. This is not so simple a thing that Poe has presented - they both understand that. It’s a question, one asked more elegantly than he would have given Poe the credit to be capable of, until very recently. And he already knows his answer, as well as he thinks Poe knows it, too.</p><p>But he doesn’t think Poe is expecting for him to hand the blindfold back and ask, carefully, “Put it on me?”</p><p>A moment of quiet, and then, “Sure,” spoken easily, except Hux can hear the shortened breath behind it.</p><p>It shouldn’t feel like this. He already can not see, but when Poe slips the blindfold over his eyes, Hux becomes completely tethered to his physical body. Like his senses have collapsed upon these singular points of contact: this soft slip of pressure that closes over his eyes, and the hands that place it there. And when Poe’s hands move down his neck to settle upon his shoulders, he feels them as keenly as the blindfold. Their weight is comfortably heavy, their grip warm, and Hux allows himself to relax into their touch.</p><p>“Alright?” Poe asks as his hands squeeze his shoulders lightly, thumbs hooking into the meat of his trapezius with just a little bit of pressure, “Not too tight?”</p><p>“Not at all,” and then, “care to help me with something else?”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>Hux can not stop his smile, when he hears how Poe’s voice rushes out.</p><p>“Give me an assist?” He leans forward a little, enough that Poe gets the hint and his palms lay flat to his shoulders. “I’ll tell you how.”</p><p>And then he is folding down between his spread legs, hands reaching forward to crawl their way across the rug in front of the hearth. His chest nearly reaches the floor without assistance, but as he takes a deep breath to extend through his spine, he says to Poe, “Put one hand to my lower back and the other between my shoulder blades. Just a little pressure, I can do the rest.”</p><p>“Like this?” Poe’s hands lay upon him just as he’d directed, but still his body sings with an electric pulse that travels straight into his core. Hux breathes through it, focusing his mind on the posture instead of Poe's touch, and manages to get his body under control enough to relax into position. That hands provide just enough pressure that Hux can release his muscles and sink a little deeper.</p><p>“That’s perfect,” he says softly.</p><p>It takes him three breaths to get his chest to the floor, another two for him to relax into the extension - about at the precise moment Poe blurts out, “are you showing off?”</p><p>His smile is already hidden, but he turns his face into his shoulder for good measure when he can’t contain his laugh. “Maybe a little.”</p><p>“How are you so kriffing flexible?” Poe almost keeps the excitement from his voice, but the hands on Hux have given him away. They've heated from warm to hot, and Hux imagines it’s something else entirely that has Poe worked up. Imagines Poe folding him over in a different way, his hands just as hot, his body pressed close enough Hux would be able to feel the way his cock would press into the seam of his pants.</p><p>He’s proud of how steady his voice is, when he says, “Over twenty years of practice will do that even for the most inflexible. But this was the single component of physical training I really excelled at. I could never build enough muscle mass to be very strong, but this I could do.”</p><p>“I can see that.”</p><p>“You may let me up now.”</p><p>When Poe's hands leave him there is a reluctance to the way they drag over his body, but as he crawls himself back up into a seat, he discovers they never really went far. They’re back upon him as soon as he is upright, smoothing over his shoulders in something like a massage.</p><p>“Is this okay?” Poe asks softly, voice right there, breath spilling over the cup of his ear.</p><p>“Yes.” It’s more than <em>okay</em>. But he doesn’t know how to say that. Instead, he leans back into Poe’s touch. He's so close Hux can rest his weight against him, so he does. And he enjoys the drag of Poe’s warm hands traveling over his shoulders to slide down his chest, the weight of his arms settling around him, as Poe pulls him back into an embrace so much like what he had sought during those fugue moments locked away in that cage. It’s enough to take him back there, and he can not stop the sudden visceral reaction of his body as the memory slams into his mind.</p><p>Maybe it’s just the memory, or maybe it’s his still damaged nerves, but a jolt tears through his body alongside a sharp inhale. Poe catches at him, arms tightening a fraction before loosening like he’s going to pull away, and it’s all Hux can do to reach up and hold fast to his arms.</p><p>“Don’t-”</p><p>“Are you-”</p><p>“-<em>don</em><em>’t let go.</em>”</p><p>But Poe is already pulling him close, between his spread knees so he's pressed flush against his chest. Seam to seam, from their shoulders down to their hips, their bodies touch. And even as Hux’s own devolves into an uncontrollable tremor, he can’t help but push back into Poe.</p><p>“Please, don’t let go,” comes out like a plea, as he drops his head back onto Poe’s shoulder to gasp in short, shallow breaths.</p><p>“I’m right here,” Poe is murmuring, lips brushing the blindfold, breath warm over his cheek. “You’re alright, you’re safe, I’ve got you.”</p><p>Another shiver, and Hux bites his lip and bares his teeth as he presses back into Poe’s body, pushing his heels across the floor like he’s back atop that duracrete scrambling his way into the corner of his cage. Poe gets the hint, squeezes him tightly, hauling him even closer as his cheek drops down to press into his forehead. Poe says nothing when Hux’s gasp turns into a whimper, or when his face turns into his neck to breathe wetly against his skin. And finally the un-mooring of his body comes completely undone, here, in the arms of the man he had longed for so desperately during those moments he’d felt so alone.</p><p>He moans into Poe’s neck as he is reduced to a tremble, to be quieted by a gentle <em>shush</em> as Poe holds him. Poe's arms are locked around his body like a vice, hands splayed big and warm over his chest. And Hux breathes into the moment just as he did when twisted and folded into those ever familiar positions. This position isn’t familiar, but it is comfortable - <em>comforting</em> - and he presses back into Poe, layering this feeling over the memory of those cold walls, sure that if he can only hold onto this sensation long enough, he could find it again when he needs it the most. Because Poe feels so <em>good</em> around him. Safe, despite the memory his mind is fraught with. And there is a new memory being made out of this, something stronger than those created in that cage.</p><p>Hux doesn’t know how long they stay like that. Long enough for the fire to burn down to a warm glow rather than waves of heat, and longer still that the locks of his joints grow tense in the position he has kept. But even when he shifts against Poe, turning his body into his chest, so his side is tucked under Poe’s arm and his cheek can rest on his shoulder, Poe does not move, and he does not let go. If anything, he holds on tighter.</p><p>Hux breaks the silence first, since it seems like Poe is content for them to stay like this forever. It’s not a bad idea, certainly not one of his worst.</p><p>“This was all I wanted,” he admits, much to his own surprise, without any prompting. The beginning of a confession that has felt so long in the making. “When I was in that cage, there was a corner I would wedge myself into. I had imagined…it was you, holding me, instead of the walls. You were all I could think about, when I- when those men-” his voice catches at the memory. The desperate longing he had felt for Poe. To find him, to save him, to hold him and make him feel safe. “I didn’t think anyone would come for me.”</p><p>“Why?” Poe’s voice breaks as he says it, like he’s on the verge of tears. “Why wouldn’t I come for you?”</p><p>But Hux can not answer. He doesn’t <em>have</em> an answer. Because of course Poe was always going to come for him. What Hux had doubted had not been Poe, but himself, and whatever value he found impossible to believe he might be worth to someone like Poe. And all he can say is, “I’ve never been important to anyone.”</p><p>It is the admission he has skirted around. Words put to the touches they have been trading all day, the kiss they had shared that morning. And Poe will know. He will understand precisely what Hux is telling him. Because despite the nature of the confession, he knows Poe won't shy away from what Hux is asking of him. But for all the words Hux knows Poe to be capable of, in this he is silent, choosing instead to pull Hux into the tightest embrace he’s felt yet.</p><p>And then it’s Poe’s turn, this time, to shake. It shivers across the press of their bodies, undermines the pace of his breath. So Hux wraps his arms around Poe, tucks his face into the crook of his neck where he can breathe him in, taste his skin. But unlike Hux’s trembling, Poe's is not born of desperate wanting, but of joy, because when Hux lifts his hand to Poe’s cheek, he can feel that same deep crevice born of only one thing: Poe’s <em>smile</em>.</p><p>“<em>Armitage</em>,” Poe finally breathes out as he turns his face into his palm, “do you have any idea-”</p><p>“I do,” he says with a rush, “I do now.”</p><p>“<em>Fuck.</em><em>”</em> And it’s Poe clutching at him, now. “Hugs, I-” he breaks off again, voice straining, and then his cheek meets his temple, and his lips brush his ear as he says, “-I really, <em>really</em> want to fuck you.”</p><p>“I’ve never…” he trails off, but he doesn’t need to finish, knows the confession is very clearly understood.</p><p>“<em>Stars</em>,” Poe whispers ragged, breath hitting his ear, “you’re not kidding.”</p><p>“No.” Of course he is not. Who would have had sex him - who would he have <em>let</em> fuck him? But he wants Poe to. Wants him to desperately. So he pulls away from Poe’s neck, to tilt his chin up so his nose find Poe’s cheek, so he can feel how hot Poe’s breath spills over his lips. He holds them there, in this liminal space they can share together, and when Poe finally meets him halfway, carefully layering their mouths together in something like a half-kiss, Hux nearly begs, “But I want you to, Poe.”</p><p>“You tell me,” Poe breathes, “you tell me if you need to stop, okay?”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>And then their mouths finally come together in a kiss. Poe’s kiss is hot, fiery, but it’s the fingers he tucks under Hux’s chin that have him panting into his mouth. It’s like Poe has known, all along, what this particular touch does to him, and now that he has permission he's intent upon using that knowledge to his advantage. His fingers curl into the tender pocket of flesh behind the jut of his chin, holding him in place as his mouth opens over his, nudging Hux to follow along. His tongue slides past his teeth to curl over his own. It’s different from their other kiss. Bolder, more demanding, pushing at a bar of the cage that has kept Hux hostage from the things he's felt for Poe: affection and lust and an ever abiding desire for the simplicity of Poe’s attention.</p><p>It leaves him exposed and shaking, and Hux makes a sound when Poe pulls away, a long needy thing that spills too loud now that Poe’s mouth is no longer covering his.</p><p>“Beautiful,” Poe murmurs, fingers tilting Hux’s head to the side so he can mouth down his neck. “You’re absolutely stunning, Armitage.”</p><p>He tries to smother his moan along with his blush, but both spill free, particularly when Poe tongues over the throb of his pulse in tandem with the hand he pets down his chest. He’s only wearing a long sleeve sweater and a pair of sweatpants, and it’s almost too easy for Poe to find the skin where the two meet. His fingers move confidently along his waistband, before the whole of his hand splays flat over his lower belly. It only takes a little bit of pressure there, a tug that matches the coil deep in his pelvis, behind his testicles, to have Hux moaning. He can’t remember when he grew this hard, but he can feel the dribble of precome that leaks from his tip, feel how it slicks the fabric of his sweats where they rub against him. And he aches to have Poe’s hand slide lower, free him from the constraints that hold him, and take him in hand.</p><p>So he presses his hand over top Poe's, and pushes insistently in a silent demand.</p><p>“What do you need?” Poe asks, lips traveling back up his neck to find his earlobe where it pokes out from beneath the blindfold. But there is a devious smile behind his words, and Hux knows he understands exactly what he’s asking for.</p><p>“Touch me.”</p><p>“You sure?”</p><p>“<em>Yes-</em>”</p><p>And that’s all it takes for Poe’s palm to slide down and cover him. He seeks out the pressure, his hips rolling intuitively into the cup of Poe’s hand, mouth opening in a quiet gasp when Poe’s palm presses into the motion.</p><p>“That’s it,” Poe murmurs, “That’s good, just like that.” And at the encouragement Hux does it again. Poe slides his hand in a slow circle, the cup of his palm cradled around the leaking tip of him, so the fabric rubs slick with each roll of his hips. It’s almost embarrassing, how wet he has become just from this. But then a line of heat nudges him from behind, and on his next roll back his hips meet what has become very obviously Poe’s erection, and somehow he grows all the wetter for it.</p><p>“Poe, are you,” he shifts back, so the seam of his pants is pushed between the his butt cheeks by the length of Poe’s cock. “Will you-”</p><p>“Yeah, come here,” said as Poe shuffles forward on his knees, tucking himself into place, hips riding low enough to wedge his cock against the furl of his anus. It presses into Hux, all heat and a weighty heaviness that has him rocking back for more, so that every roll of his hips either meets Poe’s hand or drags his anus over his cock. But it's not until Poe lifts his hips up to meet his next rock back, his hand simultaneously pressing hard into his length, to hold him to a slow grind, that Hux gasps hard, body jerking, Poe's name rushing past his teeth in a sharp shout.</p><p>“<em>Poe-</em>”</p><p>“Fuck, Armitage,” he breathes into his ear, “Does that feel good? Do you want to come?”</p><p>“I want to, <em>please</em>.”</p><p>“Will you come from this? Just my hand and the feel of my cock?”</p><p>Hux thinks he can. Can feel his whole body building up to it, when Poe’s thumb finds his slit through the fabric of his pants and circles it slowly, just as his erection slides along his anus until the tip rubs over his hole. Hux twitches against it, anus clenching hard like it could pull Poe in. It can't, of course, but the fabric of his pants rubs rough enough that he can imagine what it might feel like if Poe were to push inside, the friction and the stretch and the helpless sensation of him sliding deep, and it's suddenly all so overwhelming. He's so close, his body desperately reaching, wanting and begging for a release Hux feels too wound up to find.</p><p>"I think I'm-" Hux pants out, then moans when Poe's hand slides just right. He's right <em>there,</em> "I'm close-but I can't-"</p><p>"You can," Poe breathes hot, "I'll get you get there, I promise."</p><p>"Please," he whispers, hips pushing forward into Poe's hand, then back into his cock, his voice breaking the quiet, "Please, Poe."</p><p>"I know, I've got you."</p><p>And when Poe's fingers slide down to cup his scrotum, and then dip further back to press into the tender place behind, the length of his forearm dragging along his weeping tip, three aborted circles of his fingers into that spot is all it takes for Poe to get him there, just as he promised.</p><p>It starts first in his testicles, the tight twist of them as his muscles seize and his pelvis contracts, and then cum is spilling from him in long clenching pulses. He barely has the breath to cry out, but that too is wrenched from him in a breathless choke, as he turns his face into Poe’s neck and scrabbles his hands over where Poe’s presses over his twitching erection. His hands shake where they grasp at Poe’s wrist, press at his knuckles, holding Poe to him as he rides out his orgasm, hips pushing into their cupped hands. And all the while, Poe holds him close, arms wrapped tight around him, locking their bodies together as his own hips rock gently against his anus, until Hux finally releases his breath in a long, wavering moan.</p><p>The fingers Poe has at his jaw stroke slowly, as Hux's body eases down from a tremble to a tremor, and then sags back into Poe’s hold.</p><p>Hux thought it would be harder than this. Awkward, to come from another person's touch. He'd spent his whole life avoiding it, but here in Poe's arms it felt easy. Despite the vulnerability of the moment, the walls that have to come down to allow this, Hux feels safe. He feels good, and he trusts Poe not to take advantage of him like this. It's a trust he's never given to anyone before. A trust he didn't think himself capable of.</p><p>“<em>Stars</em>, Armitage,” Poe sounds as broken as he feels, finding him with a kiss as his own hips roll forward again. He’s gentle about it, not demanding at all, and Hux imagines that the barrier of their clothing was not in the way, and Poe could slide himself inside him. The laxity of his muscles would open him up so Poe could fuck into him with a slow, lazy pace. And Poe would take him for hours, drawing it out, rather than this frenetic spill that had taken Hux but minutes.</p><p>“Fuck me,” whispered as soon as he has his breath back. Poe’s fingers are back under his chin, stroking back and forth lightly as he nuzzles his way along his jaw. And again there is that smile, pressed just beneath his ear so Hux can hear how heavy Poe’s breathing has become.</p><p>“I will, if that's what you want,” said with a slow drag of his hand up from his softening cock. His hand moves lazy over his belly to his chest, pushing his shirt out of the way so his fingers can trail with a pressure that teases. His palm is moist, like Hux had come so much he’d leaked through his pants. <em>Everything</em> is wet down there, so he can't say it hadn’t. But when Poe’s fingers pull over a nipple in a wet slide, he thinks he must have. Poe holds him there, pressed against his chest while his fingers play with his nipple, sparks arcing straight down to his belly, while Hux tries to make sense of how easily Poe is able to make him feel good.</p><p>"You like this?" Poe confirms, fingers pinching.</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>"You like this more?" Said as Poe's fingers nudge up under his chin, so his head it tipped back over Poe's shoulder.</p><p>"<em>Yes</em>."</p><p>"And this?" Poe's lips descend to his neck as his fingers catch Hux's chin to tilt his head to the side. The heat of his mouth spills wet over his pulse point, and then Poe is kissing him there, tongue laving circles into the fluttery pound of his blood racing back down to his cock. Hux's breath is already hitching short when Poe's fingers begin rolling his nipple. The combination has him <em>shaking</em>.</p><p>"Fuck-" he rasps out, hands clasping at Poe's thighs as he searches for something to hold onto. "Why does that feel so-"</p><p>"Good?" Poe pulls away to finish with a laugh, "You're really sensitive, it's nice."</p><p>"Will it feel that way..."</p><p>"When I fuck you?" Poe's voice has deepened, and his lips forge a path up his neck and back to his ear, "I hope so, guess there's only one way to find out, huh?"</p><p>"Tell me what to do," Hux pleads, his voice sounding small, desperate. "Don't make me beg." Ignoring the fact that is precisely what he's doing.</p><p>“I have to get some things, don’t you dare go anywhere.”</p><p>He would have laughed if he wasn't already so wrecked. Instead he moans softly as Poe pulls away, leaning into the hand that cups his cheek in one last lingering touch. Then Poe is gone, moving about the safe house in a scattering of sounds: a bag being unzipped, a faucet running, the rustle of what he assumes must be blankets, and finally the stoking of the fire. The heat hits his skin in a pleasant wave right before he hears Poe kneel down beside him, and then a softness brushes his knee, followed by Poe’s hand, as it slides up his leg to rest atop his thigh.</p><p>“Come here, towards my voice, I’ve got a blanket for us.”</p><p>Hux crawls forward, hand hitting the plush softness of the blanket he would have recognized by the scent of wood smoke alone. He expects to end up on his back but Poe guides him into a kneel facing him instead, their legs slotting together as Poe shuffles close enough that the heat of him overwhelms that of the hearth. Somehow, Poe burns more hotly than a fire.</p><p>“Do you need me to lay down?”</p><p>“Not yet,” Poe says. His hand is back at his cheek, thumb at the corner of his lips as he cradles his face and adjusts the blindfold. It’s opaque enough that he can’t see the flux of the fire in his peripheral vision. He is truly blind now. Senses drilled down to the points of contact he can touch and hear: Poe’s hands, the heat of his body, and the sound of his breath. He should be scared, or at least nervous, for many more reasons beyond the obvious. But the truth is that he's not. He feels safe. Contented. And when Poe’s hand brushes down his body to tug at the waistband of his pants, to slide inside and finally touch him with the bare breadth of his palm, he feels <em>excited</em>.</p><p>“You came so much,” Poe says lowly, a little teasing, “Stars, Armitage, you’re absolutely soaked.”</p><p>“It’s been-” <em>a while</em>, he cuts off. “There’s not much privacy on base.”</p><p>“We’ll fix that.” And then his hand leaves his pants, fingers surely covered in his come.</p><p>It’s not until he hears Poe moan that he realizes what he’s done. And it’s not until his fingers meet Poe’s chin that he <em>believes</em> it.</p><p>“Did you-” he cuts off, fingers finding Poe’s hand as it slips out of his mouth, “-did you just eat my semen?”</p><p>He grabs Poe’s hand, his thumb catching in a wet slide that is as telling as the laugh Poe is letting out. “Just wait until I let you come down my throat.”</p><p>“<em>Dameron</em>,” Hux gasps incredulous, cock twitching almost painfully with how soon it’s been since he came. Still, the idea settles down there in the base of his spine: the idea that Poe likes something like this, something that should be filthy but instead makes Hux ache with a hunger he would only ever trust Poe sating.</p><p>“Is that what you want me to do?” asked as he reaches up so he can hold Poe’s hand in both of his own. He’d always known Poe’s hands were bigger, it’d been one of the first features he’d found himself thinking about, tucked away alone on base. Here, they feel huge. So different from his, as demonstrated when he places their palms together. From heel to tip their hands were approximately the same length, but when it came to width Poe’s <em>dwarfed</em> his.</p><p>“No, not now, and not ever, unless you want to.” Poe’s voice had softened from mirthful to tender. And Hux feels him lean a little closer, the heat of his body edging close enough to spill against the rapidly cooling fabric covering his cock.</p><p>“And if I want to?” he asks quietly as he tugs Poe’s hand to his mouth, lips parting so he can touch his tongue to Poe’s thumb. There’s very little come left on it, but Hux can taste it still, his heightened senses picking out his very personal scent, and a flavor he has never thought to try before. It’s not awful, certainly not the worst flavor he’s ever tasted.</p><p>Poe’s breath hits his cheek a moment before he tips their foreheads together. “Then I’d let you whenever you want,” Poe breathes out as he threads their fingers together, “except now, because I really want to fuck you.”</p><p>And then Hux is pulled into a kiss. Despite the heat of Poe’s words, his kiss is gentle. It draws Hux in as effectively as his hands do, when they find his waist and tug him into his lap. Here, sitting atop Poe’s thighs, he’s perched over Poe in an opportunity for control that whispers like an offering. Poe’s mouth opens below him, and Hux quickly pushes his tongue past his teeth to find Poe’s. He thinks if he goes slow he won’t make a mess of them both, but his concentration flags when Poe’s hands slide from his waist down to his butt and he is being hauled close.</p><p>If Hux thought Poe’s hands felt big before, here, cupping his cheeks, they're <em>massive</em>. They cradle the flesh easily, fingers curling into the cleft in a suggestion, tugging just enough he begins to feel exposed. And by the time the tip of one finds his anus and swirls slowly, Hux can not keep up the charade of a controlled kiss any longer.</p><p>“Oh stars,” he breathes, voice shaking alongside his body, which is back to trembling in Poe’s lap.</p><p>“You like that? Want me to open you up, get you ready for my cock?” Poe asks like it’s a question Hux could answer any more clearly, when his legs are already spread and his breath is coming in shallow pants. “Come on, let’s get these off.”</p><p>Both of their clothes come off quickly, haphazardly discarded to the side in a way that probably should have bothered him, but does not (maybe because his pants are already ruined). And then Poe has him back in his lap, Hux's arms looped around his shoulders and their foreheads tipped together. Poe kisses him slowly as his fingers return to his anus, slicked this time with lubricant, so they glide wet around his hole. Poe keeps him there, skirting his pleasure, as his mouth coaxes him open and his tongue enters him instead. It’s all Hux can do to return his kiss, wholly focused on the touch of Poe’s fingers and the breach that they tease.</p><p>“Ready?” Poe pulls back far enough to ask, finger circling his anus, edging just this side of enough pressure to slip inside.</p><p>“I'm ready.”</p><p>When Poe pushes his finger inside him, it is with that same abiding care he's bestowed since saving him. He goes slow, giving Hux a little at a time, so the girth of him isn't too much, but rather not enough, by the time the length of it reaches past his knuckle.</p><p>“Feel alright?” Poe asks, breath brushing his lips, their foreheads still tipped together.</p><p>“Yes.” His hands are buried in Poe’s hair, the short curls threading over the webbing between his fingers in a soft slide. It’s an alluring juxtaposition to the breach happening below, soft versus hard, yielding versus unyielding. And it's like another one of those bars of his cage is being pried back, when Poe’s second finger nudges up alongside the first.</p><p>He doesn’t push in with both yet, just lets his second finger rest against his already stretched anus. But Hux bites his lip with the tease of a greater girth that will get him closer towards what Poe’s cock might feel like. The idea of it has him moaning. The sound spills out of him unhindered when Poe’s mouth covers his. The kiss is the final threshold, and then Hux is <em>begging-</em></p><p>“<em>Please, </em>Poe, I’m <em>ready-</em>”</p><p>“Yeah?” The second finger pushes in with the first, a slower insertion than before, so slow that every centimeter of his joined fingers build into a sensation of aching pleasure well before the two bottom out. “That better?”</p><p>Hux gasps, and then bites off the sound. But despite his teeth sinking into his lip a moan still works free. Poe holds steady as Hux sucks in breath after shallow breath, legs shaking now with the effort, hands twisted so tightly into his hair he has to consciously peel them back lest he hurt Poe. But his body is demanding, senses focused upon the breach to anus, so that everything else almost fades away, and the desire to move overwhelms him to the point of action.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>,” he hisses out, and then he can’t stop his hips from moving. He rides Poe’s fingers like he might his cock, rocking down and then lifting up so the combined girth catches his sphincter. He’s hard again, and he can’t remember when it happened, but his cock head rubs against Poe’s stomach with a wet slide that has him moaning.</p><p>“That's it, that’s perfect, you're doing great,” Poe breathes, lips brushing his as he moves his hand in tandem with Hux’s hips, wrist twisting a little every time Hux sinks down. “I love you like this, Hugs. Letting it all go, letting me make you feel good.” It’s intimate and awful and has Hux burying his face in Poe’s hair and sucking in breath after shuddering breath.</p><p>And that’s all before a third finger enters him. Because when it does, Hux can’t help the sob he breathes out, or the scrabble of his hands through Poe’s hair. It’s so <em>much</em>, but so good, even as pain teases his edges, as his hole is stretched impossibly wide. But then Poe curls his fingers, and all the pain he thought he felt is flooded out with a wave of such overwhelming pleasure that he can’t stop the <em>shout</em> that drags from his throat.</p><p>"<em>Poe-</em>" The sound claws free as Poe’s fingers find a place inside that has him doubting that anything, even Poe’s cock, could feel better than <em>this</em>.</p><p>“Stars above, I wanna make you come like this,” Poe says with a rush, as his fingers uncurl so he can return to that slide in and out, “you have no idea how beautiful you are, do you Hugs?”</p><p>“I’m not-” his voice catches as Poe’s fingers curl again, words dissolving into a broken moan.</p><p>"You are," said so seriously Hux can't stop his shiver, or the welling of emotion in his chest. There's warmth in his eyes, tears that are collecting behind the blindfold, that maybe would have already fallen if not for the thin strip of material that hides them. And despite the unknown places his body is being taken to, by the time Poe’s fingers pull free, he has hardly a thought beyond how much he wants more of this thing between them. How his life up until this point never would have allowed for something like this: this opening of himself up to another person. It feels important - essential - like living is a thing he has missed out on, only to be discovered here, under the weight of Poe’s attention and the breadth of his touch.</p><p>He’s stripped of his thoughts when he is tipped back onto the blanket. And for maybe the first time, he wishes he could see. Wishes he could look up into Poe’s face as he leans down over him, watch him search his eyes for the assurance he is surely seeking. Instead he has to see with his other senses what his eyes won’t reveal. Finds it in the brush of fingers to his cheek, quite possibly the most tender touch he’s felt yet. They stroke slowly, trailing down his face and along his jaw, until they come just under his chin.</p><p>But maybe Hux doesn’t need his eyes to know what Poe is seeing. Between the blindfold and the tremors that have consumed him he must look like a wreck - certainly not like a man who is ready to be fucked for the first time in his life. So he says, just to be sure-</p><p>“I’m ready, Poe.”</p><p>Poe leans down close, mouth finding his with a long, consuming kiss, “Tell me if you need to stop.”</p><p>“I won’t.”</p><p>Another kiss, this one gentle; the most gentle of all.</p><p>“But you will? If you need to.”</p><p>And as he answers, “Yes, of course,” Hux thinks that no one has ever been this careful with him. That, until Poe, he hadn’t understood it possible for a person to take such care with another. And just like before, he is suddenly struck with an impression of safety, like the rest of the world truly has fallen away, so that it’s only him and Poe and the acute awareness of their bodies coming together, and all the things they can make each other feel.</p><p>The tip of Poe’s erection is hot and wet and sliding obscenely over his lube-slicked anus. Already it is so much bigger than Poe’s fingers, and he knows it must be when the girth of it replaces the tip. The whole of its length drags along him teasing a penetration, so that by the time Poe has his leg hooked over his shoulder and is folding Hux's body down over his own chest, he is shaking with anticipation. And by the time the tip of Poe is nudging forward, spreading him open, and then sliding inside, Hux is absolutely aching for it, enough that he lets out a long broken wail.</p><p>Hux knows Poe is careful, but it still feels like an undoing of his body, to be remade into a shape that can accommodate <em>this</em>.</p><p>“Fuck, Armitage, are you okay?”</p><p>“Yes, Poe, I-” Hux breaks off, smothers the next broken sound he makes in the arm Poe is braced on, the closest part of him he can reach. He feels cracked open, exposed, Poe's cock filling him impossibly full. Surely he is shaking apart, like if he’s not careful he’ll become lost to this thing. So he holds onto what he can - one hand gripping Poe’s wrist, while the other searches blindly until it twists into the blanket beside him. He hears Poe make a sound - something long and aching - like watching Hux struggle for an anchor has left <em>him</em> un-moored.</p><p>“Here, let me-”</p><p>And then Poe grabs his free leg to pull that over his shoulder too, so he can drop closer, Hux's legs folding deep and his body curled over itself, until Poe is right there - right above him - close enough that Hux should probably feel crowded but instead feels relief. Here he can hear Poe’s breath, enjoy his heat, and touch him wherever he needs, which Hux decides is his hair, as he sinks both of his hands into those soft curls.</p><p>“Better?” Poe asks softly, knowingly, confident in his ability to read Hux, something that maybe would have irritated him once, but now reduces him to a moan.</p><p>“Better,” he finally manages, and then, “is it alright for you?”</p><p>“Hugs, you feel <em>incredible</em>," Poe brushes his fingers down his cheek as he says it, a sweet thing that Hux chases. He turns into Poe's hand so it covers his cheek, opens his mouth with a little sigh as Poe's thumb strokes slowly over the corner of his mouth. "I'll go slow, you tell me if something doesn't feel good. Don't hold anything back, okay?”</p><p>"I won't." He doesn't think he could, even if he wanted to.</p><p>Poe kisses him then, a slow deep kiss that feels almost as penetrative as his cock. By the time he draws away, lips finding his forehead, hips dragging back in a long slide, Hux is aching for the feel of Poe filling him in any way he can have - his cock or his tongue or the simple pleasure of his voice in his ear. And when Poe thrusts in with a gentle force, the girth of him fills Hux deeply enough that it’s all he can focus on, this unabiding stretch that leaves him gasping. His hole twitches hard, clutching desperately at Poe. Hux is powerless to it. It's as if his body has been reduced to instinct, and it’s only demand is to keep Poe inside. With Poe's next thrust forward, Hux lifts his hips instinctually, meeting him in a gentle press. They gasp together, Poe's voice spilling sweet above him, as Hux whines quietly enough to sound like a whimper.</p><p>And then his next thrust catches that spot inside him, the same one Poe's fingers has sought, and better becomes an abstraction of incredible, because nothing should ever feel this <em>good</em>.</p><p>Hux sucks air between his teeth, head turning to the side so his cheek presses into Poe’s arm, as his hips lift again to to meet Poe’s in a slow, circling grind.</p><p>"Good?"</p><p>“<em>Poe-</em><em>”</em></p><p>“Talk to me Hugs, tell me how you feel.”</p><p>“I feel-” he breaks off, doesn’t know how to answer, how to describe what is happening to him, “I feel open, but full, like I’ll be empty when you’re not- when you’re <em>gone</em>,” he finally pushes out, and then gasps, when Poe’s hips do it all over again, another slow thrust that is followed up by a grind, again and again, until Poe is rocking down into him with an easy rhythm.</p><p>“I’m not going anywhere, Hugs,” Poe says the words into the space between them, said with that smile Hux can see in his mind, “and we can do this any time you want.”</p><p>Hux laughs then, but it comes out sounding like a sob, and quickly Poe’s fingers are at his chin tipping him up into a kiss. It folds his body even more deeply, to the point that his erection becomes trapped against his belly, but it’s worth it for the kiss. Poe kisses him like they’re not halfway towards oblivion. His tongue sweeping slow licks over Hux’s panting mouth, his lips following in a velvet slide. And his breath spills hot into Hux’s mouth until he's sipping at Poe like he’s the air he needs. Right then, that’s precisely how he feels.</p><p>“Arms around me,” Poe whispers as he spreads his legs wide, hooking them into the crook of his elbows. A request that Hux obeys like a command, when his hands slide from Poe’s hair to wrap around his shoulders instead. And only then does he say, “Hold on, don’t let go, and don’t come, not until I tell you.”</p><p>And then Poe changes his pace, and Hux is again confronted with the impossible reality of things becoming not just better, but <em>incredible</em>.</p><p>Poe drives into him hard. Hips snapping forward at an angle that plunges into that spot inside him and has Hux <em>screaming</em>. And then he does it again, driving his cock into his prostate, digging in with a perfunctory roll of his hips with every thrust until Hux is not so much screaming as he is sobbing, little cries of pleasure mixing with the shallow catch of his breath. The sounds wrench out of him, surely too loud in the little distance that separates them, but Poe is undeterred. In fact matches him, forehead dropping to his as he moans long and low, a single show of an unraveled control, the missing component to all of this, which collects like Hux's senses in a convergence of parts that make him feel whole.</p><p>“Poe,” he breathes out between gasps, between thrusts. “<em>Poe,</em>” said like a plea, even though he doesn’t know what he needs, just that he needs it. And he thinks Poe can give it to him. Hopes, at least, that he might hold the map with the path that might lead him there.</p><p>“You’re doing so great, Hugs. You're so close, don’t worry.” Poe rasps out as he reaches between their bodies. “I’ll get you there, trust me.”</p><p><em>‘I do’ </em>he wants to say, but can’t find the words - doesn’t need to, though, because Poe must already know. His hand is suddenly upon him, fingers wrapped tighltly around his length while his thumb rolls slowly, almost lovingly around his tip and that’s it - that’s exactly what Hux wanted. And what he needs comes next. Because it's Poe’s words that push him over, when he leans his head down to nuzzle alongside the blindfold.</p><p>“Come for me, Armitage. Go on, you can do it, let me see you come.”</p><p>He comes hard. Harder than ever before, harder than he ever has in his life. Hard enough that he screams - he fucking <em>screams </em>from it - hands clutching down Poe’s shoulders as his body twines tight to breaking. Rope after rope of unspent come spill down his belly and his chest as his body coils tight, anus clenching down hard on Poe, his testicles drawn up so far into his body he thinks they might become lost. And then Poe drives into that spot in a rolling grind, rocking in with a pulsing sensation of fullness as he comes. He captures Hux with a kiss as he does it, mouth opening over his as Poe gasps brokenly against him, and it drags another rope of come out of Hux's still twitching erection, as if Poe were unrelentingly determined to peel back those last few bars of his cage until Hux is spilling free from the restraints that have trapped him for so long.</p><p>Poe’s moan breaks loud between them as his hips slow to a grind and his cock twitches empty. And Hux pulls his hands through Poe's hair over and over, as his moan turns to pants and his forehead drops down to touch Hux’s. They shake together, clutching at one another, finding connection wherever they can. And whatever has broken free inside Hux manifests as a desire to bring Poe back from his own edge - petting his hands over Poe’s cheeks, whispering words of affection he didn’t know he had the vocabulary for, until Poe’s pants turn to smiles and then into laughs beneath the press of Hux’s palms.</p><p>Poe’s arms come around him as he collapses to the side, dragging him atop his chest where they can splay out before the warmth of the fire. And when Poe’s mouth tips up to find Hux’s, for a long moment they stay like that; locked in an embrace, kissing like neither of them had just walked off the precipice of coming completely undone, slowing fast down to a crawl that gives them the opportunity to find space here, in what is, really nothing more than a simple act of intimacy.</p><p>It felt like so much more to Hux. And he hopes it did for Poe, too. Dares to think it must, because surely sex was not supposed to feel like <em>that</em>: where the act wasn’t so much the things Poe had done to his body, but the layers he had peeled back from the cage of his mind. Because Hux wants to let him in. Suspects he already has, and that this act of allowing Poe to physically enter him was nothing more than the seal to what Poe had already planted inside.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>They fall asleep together, that night. Crawling into the bed with the whispered words of a good night that had precluded hours then spent talking of nothing and everything. Stories and secrets and things Hux has never told anyone, let alone admitted to himself.</p><p>He told Poe of the time he kept a cat aboard the <em>Finalizer</em>. An orange thing that had been found in the engineering level after a diplomatic visit from a representative of some outer rim dynasty. He’d not the heart to jettison the creature despite the rules against sub-human animals being kept on board. <em>It had been my first breach of Order tenets</em> he’d confessed, much to Poe’s chagrin - that he would break protocol for a cat of all things. <em>She was very keen on me, and she hated Kylo Ren.</em> He’d even told him her name: Millicent.</p><p>And Poe told him of his and BB-8’s history, that something had gone strange with its programming, and how the little droid truly did view him as its father. And that BB-8 had followed him from the New Republic’s fleet to the Resistance when he had left Naval service, and had never left him since. <em>Sometimes I think he daydreams</em>, Poe laughed like it was absurd, and then stopped, when Hux mused that he wasn’t so sure droids didn’t. <em>Who</em><em>’s to say what constitutes imagination,</em> and then, <em>neither do droids have hearts, but your</em><em>’s must, if it has followed you this far. </em>Words which had silenced Poe long enough for him to find Hux with a kiss.</p><p>Soft and chaste, and as lingering as their first. They skirted the edge of more, Poe’s attention beginning and ending at the places on Hux’s map that were well-marked. He’d never considered himself easy to read, but Poe’s ability to maneuver through all the little hang-ups he was only half-aware he had made it feel easy.</p><p>No, maybe easy wasn’t the right word. It made him feel comfortable. It made him feel <em>safe.</em></p><p>He wakes to shadows and birdsong and the creaky groan of ancient wooden joists, and the moist velvety heat of Poe’s skin beneath him. He’s half slung across his body, knee rucked up over his hips and his arm flung out across his chest, his face buried into the side of Poe’s neck. There is a pulse beneath his lips and he takes the long moment offered to taste it, parting his mouth to tongue over it, pressing so close that the heat of Poe’s skin spills into his mouth. Poe rumbles beneath him, a deep half-asleep sound of contentment, and then there is an arm coming around Hux. It drags him impossibly closer. Close enough that he can’t hide the waking of his erection, or ignore the evidence of Poe’s own.</p><p>He’s never known a morning like this one. One filled with safety and contentment and the ebbing cant of time that does not feel like it is running out, but running over.</p><p>He smiles into Poe’s neck, blinks his eyes against the darkness as he breathes out a sigh, and then pulls away, just enough, to gaze down at Poe’s sleepy half-smile.</p><p>Poe’s <em>smile</em>.</p><p>“Oh,” he says, simply, and then a little louder, “shit.”</p><p>“What?” Poe asks with a sleep roughened voice, “What’s wrong?” And then his his eyes are blinking open, to meet Hux’s stare, and he doesn’t need to say anything for Poe to understand. “Armitage, you can <em>see?</em>”</p><p>He Is grinning. It cracks his face open with a relief that rivals that which he felt from Poe’s rescue. He can <em>see</em>, and that Poe is the first thing he has laid his eyes upon strikes both incredibly important and embarrassingly romantic.</p><p>“I can see,” he says aloud, a confirmation and an affirmation. But it is his fingers as they touch Poe’s face that say more. They walk the same path they had taken the previous morning, but this time his eyes follow, and he sees with his sight what his heart has already discovered. “You’re really quite handsome, Dameron.”</p><p>Poe is laughing, and then he is pulling him down into a kiss. It is slow and sweet, and Hux savors the reality of Poe’s body beneath him, lays his own down when the weight of Poe’s arm comes around his waist. And his breath only hitches a little when their hips meet, and their erections slot together. There is no urging from Poe for more than just that, but as Hux opens his mouth to Poe’s tongue, he opens his legs into a straddle, and drags from Poe a rumbling moan when his hips roll into his cock.</p><p>He comes twice. Once with Poe’s fingers buried inside him, curled into that spot while his mouth works his cock, another riding Poe to completion, a litany of praise spilling from Poe that has Hux flushing so red he is sure his skin is brighter than his hair. And even after Poe has come, his spend leaking out of Hux’s aching hole, his own cock twitching empty against Poe’s stomach, Poe does not let him go. He keeps Hux’s hips in place as he lazily rocks up into him until his erection softens, eyes unrelenting as they hold Hux’s and he smiles <em>that</em> smile up at him, the one that beams as bright as a sun.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>“And how about this line?”</p><p>He calls off the string of numbers and letters, only miss-reading the D as a O but managing not to flush as he readjusts the glasses that are perched on the bridge of his nose.</p><p>“Almost twenty-twenty, you’ll likely need a replacement pair within six months once your eyes have more time to settle. After that, we can consider corrective surgery, like we discussed.”</p><p>“I don’t know, I like the glasses.” Poe steps into his line of sight, hand sliding over his knee in a bold statement of affection. Hux does not turn him away. In fact meets his hand with his own.</p><p>They make their way back to Poe’s quarters - <em>their</em> quarters - now that Hux has moved the last of his meager belongings from his shanty lean-to. Ajan Kloss’s sun is still too bright for him to be outside for long. The headaches come quickly if he doesn’t wear some sort of eye protection. Poe says he doesn’t mind. Says he misses the stars anyway. That they can take a trip, not a mission, just go somewhere to get away, as if the half-week they’d spent in the safe house had unleashed some sort of domestic desire inside Poe. Someone who found just as much joy in caring after a person as they did playing the hero who saved them.</p><p>That night they meet Rey in front of the bonfire. It’s the first they’ve attended since their return, and it feels as though there are more eyes on them than there are on the fire, or the prospective partners to be found. Hux likes to think it is him and Poe together, and not his glasses which draw their attention, except that wouldn’t explain Rey’s delight when they settle onto the rocks beside her.</p><p>“Hux, your glasses look great!”</p><p>“That’s what I keep telling him, the frames make him look…” Poe trails off as he waves a hand at Rey and she jumps in enthusiastically.</p><p>“Intelligent, sophisticated, classy. They suit you.”</p><p>"Not a particularly difficult achievement amongst your lot,” he pretend sneers. She'll know he’s teasing, but he is still relieved when she returns his sneer with laugh.</p><p>Despite his efforts against it, the compliment settles honest. It makes him flush, and he trusts the fire to hide his very obvious display of emotion, even as he angles himself towards Poe seated at his side. He glances again at the people around them, see their eyes slide over them with an easy consideration. Their relationship is no secret. The whole of the base had known within hours of their return, and the past two weeks have produced a rumor mill of speculation that has resulted in the consensus that they’d eloped, as if everyone had assumed they were already together for the past year, rather than a span of a few dozen cycles.</p><p>"Here, Hux, this is for you. I heard you lost yours."</p><p>Rey hands him a datapad. It's not the one he stole form Tico's workshop, nor is it as nice as his lost Order pad. But it looks like a newer model, clean, with an un-cracked screen and only slightly worn edges.</p><p>"Thank you," comes easy.</p><p>"Sure," Rey smiles up at him sheepishly, before reaching out to tap the screen. "I was actually hoping you could help me with this."</p><p>Upon the screen illuminates the datasets they had retrieved from the smuggles all those weeks back. He stares down at the file tree, his mouth a firm line and his hands steady even though he wants nothing more than to push his glasses up his nose and dive into the data.</p><p>Instead he meets Rey's eyes and allows himself a small smile, "Of course, I'd be glad to."</p><p>"Oh thank the stars," breathed with a relief that widens his smile.</p><p>They stay for an hour, maybe a little less, before they head back to their quarters, paired together like so many other couples, off to see if they can’t seek something more meaningful than fire and cheap alcohol. And when Poe settles him onto their bed and goes back to working at the window that has been stuck shut for months, laughing over his shoulder when he finally gets the stubborn awning to open so that night can spill into their private shelter, Hux knows he’s succeeded. Somehow, against all the odds, the path on his map has led him here, to Poe’s side, and a freedom and safety he never believed could be his.</p><p>“I found these on the transport earlier.”</p><p>Poe tosses him a pack of ciggs. Not his, but the sweet herbal ones Poe sometimes smoked. Hux understands now, he only ever did it for him. It’d been a way for Poe to connect, in those early days, when talking to him had probably been as painful for Poe as it had been for him.</p><p>“I don’t smoke,” he says like he doesn't expect Poe to play along. So he’s pleasantly surprised when that’s precisely what he does.</p><p>“You don’t drink <em>and</em> you don’t smoke? Stars Hugs, how do you let loose?”</p><p>He adjusts his glasses, pushing them up his nose so the room comes into better focus, and so he can look at Poe clearly when he says, “I suppose you’ll just have to come over here and see.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Dear Adunno, thank you for giving me free reign and I hope this is something close to what you were hoping for ♥ I tried to hit most of your tags to a varying degree, and it was fun seeing how I could make them work together!</p><p>To everyone else, thank you so much for reading ♥</p></blockquote></div></div>
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